Cable-driven elastic parallel humanoid head with face tracking for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions

Hao Su, Laurie Dickstein-Fischer, Kevin Harrington, Qiushi Fu, Weina Lu, Haibo Huang, Gregory Cole, Gregory S. Fischer

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper presents the development of new prismatic actuation approach and its application in human-safe humanoid head design. To reduce actuator output impedance and mitigate unexpected external shock, the prismatic actuation method uses cables to drive a piston with preloaded spring. By leveraging the advantages of parallel manipulator and cabledriven mechanism, the developed neck has a parallel manipulator embodiment with two cable-driven limbs embedded with preloaded springs and one passive limb. The eye mechanism is adapted for low-cost webcam with succinct "ball-in-socket" structure. Based on human head anatomy and biomimetics, the neck has 3 degree of freedom (DOF) motion: pan, tilt and one decoupled roll while each eye has independent pan and synchronous tilt motion (3 DOF eyes). A Kalman filter based face tracking algorithm is implemented to interact with the human. This neck and eye structure is translatable to other human-safe humanoid robots. The robot's appearance reflects a non-threatening image of a penguin, which can be translated into a possible therapeutic intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC'10
Pages467-470
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event2010 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC'10 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Duration: Aug 31 2010Sep 4 2010

Publication series

Name2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC'10

Other

Other2010 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC'10
Country/TerritoryArgentina
CityBuenos Aires
Period8/31/109/4/10

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Signal Processing
  • Health Informatics

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