Humanoid Face Robot WE-3RV

DESCRIPTION

The WE-3RV (Waseda Eye No. 3 Refined V) is a human-like head robot developed in 2001 by the Takanishi Laboratory at Waseda University, built to give a humanoid the head mechanisms and functions needed to communicate naturally with a person by expressing human-like emotion. It has 28 degrees of freedom - 4 in the neck, 4 in the eyeballs, 6 in the eyelids, 8 in the eyebrows, 4 in the lips, 1 in the jaw and 1 in the lung - and moves at speeds close to a person's: 160 deg/s at the neck, 600 deg/s for the eyeballs and 900 deg/s for the eyelids, completing a blink in 0.3 seconds. The robot takes in four sensations - visual, auditory, cutaneous and olfactory. Black-and-white CCD cameras in both eyes let it recognise a target and pursue it. It expresses emotion through eyebrows, lips and facial colour: red and blue electroluminescent sheets are layered under flesh-coloured silicone rubber across the forehead, around the eyes, the cheeks and the nose, so the face can flush or pale. Beneath that skin sit soft clear gel and force-sensitive resistors that detect touch. A speaker connected by flexible tube gives it a voice - the words carry no meaning, serving instead to strengthen the facial expression. WE-3RV was one of four anthropomorphic robots the institute exhibited at ROBODEX 2002.

FEATURES