Su, Hao (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Dickstein-Fischer, Laurie (Northeastern University), Harrington, Kevin (WPI), Fu, Qiushi (Arizona State University), Lu, Weina (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Huang, Haibo (Department of MIE, University of Toronto), Cole, Gregory (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Fischer, Gregory (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

Cable-Driven Elastic Parallel Humanoid Head with Face Tracking for Autism Spectrum Disorder Interventions

Scheduled for presentation during the Poster Session "Assitive, prosthetics, and orthotocs" (WeBPo04), Wednesday, September 1, 2010, 10:45−12:15, Catalinas/Golden Horn

32nd Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference, August 31 - September 4, 2010, Buenos Aires Sheraton Hotel, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on January 20, 2021

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 cable driven 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 nonthreatening image of a penguin, which can can be translated into a possible therapeutic intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.