An articulated talking face for the iCub

Alberto Parmiggiani (1, 2) , Marco Randazzo (1, 2) , Marco Maggiali (1) , Frédéric Elisei (3) , Gérard Bailly (4) , Giorgio Metta (5, 2)

1 Department of Robotics
2 IIT - Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
3 GIPSA-Services - GIPSA-Services
4 GIPSA-MAGIC - GIPSA - Machines parlantes, Gestes oro-faciaux, Interaction Face-à-face, Communication augmentée
5 LIRA-lab

Recent developments in human-robot interaction show how the ability to communicate with people in a natural way is of great importance for artificial agents. The implementation of facial expressions has been found to significantly increase the interaction capabilities of humanoid robots. For speech, displaying a correct articulation with sound is mandatory to avoid audiovisual illusions like the McGurk effect (leading to comprehension errors) as well as to enhance the intelligibility in noise. This work describes the design, construction and testing of an animatronic talking face developed for the iCub robot. This talking head has an articulated jaw and four independent lip movements actuated by five motors. It is covered by a specially designed elastic tissue cover whose hemlines at the lips are attached to the motors via connecting linkages.

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Alberto Parmiggiani, Marco Randazzo, Marco Maggiali, Frédéric Elisei, Gérard Bailly, et al.. An articulated talking face for the iCub. Humanoids 2014 - IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Nov 2014, Madrid, Spain. ⟨hal-01110293⟩