Design and Implementation of a Facial Character Analysis Algorithm for Humanoid Robots.

Summary: Humanoid robots (HR) equipped with a sophisticated facial character analysis (FCA) algorithm can able to initiate crucial improvements in human–robot interactions. This paper, for the first time in the literature, proposes a three-stage FCA algorithm for the HR. At the initial stage of this algorithm, the HR detects the face with the Viola–Jones algorithm, and then important facial distance measurements are obtained with the geometric-based facial distance measurement technique. Finally, the measured facial distances are evaluated with the physiognomy science to reveal the characteristic properties of a person. Even though the proposed algorithm can be implemented to all HR, in this paper, it has been specifically applied to NAO HR. The reliability of the developed FCA algorithm is verified by analyzing each terminal decision about the character and its connection with the measured facial distances in the anatomy science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]