Generalized facial expression of character face based on deformation model for human-robot communication

Communication between a computer system and a user is quite important. For communication, a facial expression of robot will be effective to show an internal state of the robot from the mental aspect. If a system has its own face with appropriate facial expression, it can be also used as the communication interpreter. In this paper, we focus on the facial expression for the computer system. We have developed the artificial face by both software and hardware as a communication tool. We consider that the recognition rate of the artificial face by the user is important for a real communication. So, we used the "Character Face (CF)" as an information terminal and some basic facial expressions were expressed using the deformation technique. We proposed a normalization technique to apply the facial expression to the various different faces easily. We developed the facial expression system by the 3D computer graphics (CG) and evaluated the recognition rate of their expressions. The recognition rate was improved by the deformation-based approach and this method can be applied to the various different faces by the normalization technique.