Chinese Scientists Develop Robots with Human-Like Facial Features

A team of Chinese researchers, led by Liu Xiaofeng, a professor at Hohai University in East China’s Jiangsu Province, has developed a robot capable of displaying highly expressive human-like facial features.

This advancement is attributed to a new algorithm created by Liu and his team, which enables humanoid robots to generate more realistic facial expressions.

Liu explained that one of the major challenges with humanoid robots has been their inability to replicate the subtle and authentic facial emotions that humans exhibit, which can hinder their appeal to users.

To address this, the researchers developed a comprehensive two-phase method aimed at enhancing the range of realistic facial expressions that autonomous emotional robots can display.In the first phase, the team generated images of complex robot facial expressions using artificial units.

In the second phase, they created an advanced robot with multiple degrees of freedom in its facial movements, allowing it to replicate the finely detailed expressions generated by the algorithm.

“To maintain the integrity of artificial units (AUs) while reducing identity interference, we use a latent facial attribute space to separate expression-related cues from unrelated ones, employing only the former for expression synthesis,” the researchers explained in their study.

“In the following phase, we developed an emotional robot equipped with various degrees of freedom for facial movements, enabling it to embody the synthesized fine-grained facial expressions.”