I-Corps: Commercialization feasibility research of animation-projection ExpressionBots

市场上现有的机器人平台在自然面对面交流方面存在严重的局限性。另一种可以克服这些问题的方法是使用最先进的角色动画技术，将逼真的3d模型投射到可以显示3d模型的机器人面具上。自然的语言和面部表情。目前，市场上还没有这样的基于动画的人类机器人代理，如果没有大量的设计工作和定制，也无法通过即插即用的机电元件组装出这样的功能。在这个提案中，该团队开发了一个机器人头部，它可以在半透明的定制面具上投射动画，以模仿情感面部手势和视觉语言。提议的产品（ExpressionBot）是一种极低成本的便携式机器人头，使用动画投影和定制设计的面具，可以显示丰富的情感面部手势和由化身代理生成的视觉语言。代理可以说话，产生和镜像面部表情与代理同步？视觉和韵律语言。ExpressionBot可以用作教室里的科学导师、养老院的陪伴机器人、博物馆导游、酒店接待员和旅游信息亭。ExpressionBot1包括一个丰富的物理显示门户，包括机器人角色实例化的软件库，包括面部表情生成和视觉语音生成，人类面部识别，人类语音识别和自然语言处理，以及世界环境识别。

Existing robotic platforms in the market have serious limitations for natural face-to-face communication. An alternative approach that could overcome many of these problems is to use state-of-the-art character animation technologies to project lifelike 3-D models onto a robotic mask that can display the 3-D models? natural speech and facial expressions. Currently, there are no such animation-based human robotic agents available in the market that can be acquired, nor can such capabilities be assembled from plug-and-play mechatronic components without significant design work and customization. In this proposal the team has developed a robotic head that projects an animation on a translucent custom designed facial mask to mimic emotive facial gestures and visual speech.The proposed product (ExpressionBot) is an extremely low-cost and portable robotic head using animation-projection and a custom designed facial mask that can display rich emotive facial gestures and visual speech generated by an avatar agent. The agent can speak, produce and mirror facial expressions synchronized with agent?s visual and prosodic speech. The ExpressionBot can be used as science tutor in classrooms, companionbots in nursing homes, museums tour guide, hotels receptionists, and tourist information kiosks. The ExpressionBot1 comprises a rich Physical Display Portal complete with software libraries for robotic character instantiation including facial expression generation and visual speech generation, human facial recognition, human speech recognition and natural language processing, and world environment recognition.