Humanoid Robot Design Challenge

As the modern society progresses, the need for mental care becomes more predominant. Children with autism and depression has being increasing, having a robotic tutor have a significant role in recovery of such disorders. Aging populations pose some real challenges, especially when people are in need of a companion. An assistive robot can be a loyal companion, and make interesting conversations.

A humanoid robot head implementation is proposed in this poster. The robot head, Ryan Marni (SocioBot) is developed to mimic the facial expressions and respond to the person talking to it. Marni contains a dynamic facial expression generator and a 3 degree of freedom neck. By deploying precise motion closed loop control, Marni is able to obtain a repeatable and precise motion, therefore providing possibility for trajectory in order to create movement patterns. The robotic head will use an accelerometer to measure the motion angle and feedback data to micro-computing unit (MCU) thus implementing feedback loop control. These neck moments are required to make gestures and also make an eye contact with the person talking. A facial expression generator is developed as well to mimic people and display emotions such as joy, disgust, anger, fear and sadness. The final deliverable will be able to serve as a companion for elderly people and as a tutor for autism children