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A Test Environment for Studying Robotic Eye Movements
services, like moving the platform. Furthermore, this base is extended
with a human–machine interface (HMI) featuring a robotic head, a touch
screen, cameras, speakers, and microphones. The touch screen is used
for direct haptic user input; the cameras can provide visual saliency
information, and the microphones are used for speech recognition
and audio-based saliency information. The modules for the interaction
between the human and the robot are run on an additional PC, which is
powered by the on-board batteries (providing enough power for the robot
to operate for approximately 8 hours). For the communication between
and within these computing nodes, two middlewares are applied and the
services can be orchestrated using a knowledge-based controller as in
Wallhoff et al. (2010). However, the services can be additionally advertised
using the Bonjour protocol and thereby allow other modules, such as the
Wizard-of-Oz module, to request information (e.g., current head position)
or send control commands.
The robotic head itself has two degrees of freedom (DOF; pan/tilt) and was
originally equipped with 2-DOF pivotable eyes, which, however, did not meet
our requirements and were therefore replaced. We chose this particular robot
head because, in contrast to a more human-like android platform, it possesses
stylized facial features. This allowed leaving aside uncanny valley effects
that are likely to appear as soon as the robot looks almost human (Mori 1970).
Furthermore, this choice reduced human likeness even more to eye and head
movement behavior, as opposed to comparing the overall appearance.
16.2.1.2 EDDIE
EDDIE (see Figure 16.2) is a robot head that was developed at the Institute
of Automatic Control Engineering to investigate the effect of nonverbal
communication on human–robot interaction, with the focus on emotional
expressions (Sosnowski, Kühnlenz, and Buss 2006). A distinctive feature of
this robot head is that it includes not only human-like facial features but also
animal-like features (Kühnlenz, Sosnowski, and Buss 2010). The ears can be
tilted as well as folded/unfolded and a crown with four feathers is included.
Accounting for the uncanny valley effect, the design of the head resembles
a reasonable degree of familiarity to a human face while remaining clearly
machine-like. EDDIE has a total of 28 degrees of freedom, with 23 degrees of
freedom in the face and 5 degrees of freedom in the neck. The 5 degrees of
freedom in the neck provide the necessary redundancy to approximate the
flexibility and redundancy of the human neck when looking at given coordinates. It utilizes an experimentally derived humanoid motion model, which
solves the redundancy and models the joint trajectories and dependencies.
For the Wizard-of-Oz scenario, the head tracker data can be directly mapped
to the joints of the neck, circumventing the motion model.
A Test Environment for Studying Robotic Eye Movements
services, like moving the platform. Furthermore, this base is extended
with a human–machine interface (HMI) featuring a robotic head, a touch
screen, cameras, speakers, and microphones. The touch screen is used
for direct haptic user input; the cameras can provide visual saliency
information, and the microphones are used for speech recognition
and audio-based saliency information. The modules for the interaction
between the human and the robot are run on an additional PC, which is
powered by the on-board batteries (providing enough power for the robot
to operate for approximately 8 hours). For the communication between
and within these computing nodes, two middlewares are applied and the
services can be orchestrated using a knowledge-based controller as in
Wallhoff et al. (2010). However, the services can be additionally advertised
using the Bonjour protocol and thereby allow other modules, such as the
Wizard-of-Oz module, to request information (e.g., current head position)
or send control commands.
The robotic head itself has two degrees of freedom (DOF; pan/tilt) and was
originally equipped with 2-DOF pivotable eyes, which, however, did not meet
our requirements and were therefore replaced. We chose this particular robot
head because, in contrast to a more human-like android platform, it possesses
stylized facial features. This allowed leaving aside uncanny valley effects
that are likely to appear as soon as the robot looks almost human (Mori 1970).
Furthermore, this choice reduced human likeness even more to eye and head
movement behavior, as opposed to comparing the overall appearance.
16.2.1.2 EDDIE
EDDIE (see Figure 16.2) is a robot head that was developed at the Institute
of Automatic Control Engineering to investigate the effect of nonverbal
communication on human–robot interaction, with the focus on emotional
expressions (Sosnowski, Kühnlenz, and Buss 2006). A distinctive feature of
this robot head is that it includes not only human-like facial features but also
animal-like features (Kühnlenz, Sosnowski, and Buss 2010). The ears can be
tilted as well as folded/unfolded and a crown with four feathers is included.
Accounting for the uncanny valley effect, the design of the head resembles
a reasonable degree of familiarity to a human face while remaining clearly
machine-like. EDDIE has a total of 28 degrees of freedom, with 23 degrees of
freedom in the face and 5 degrees of freedom in the neck. The 5 degrees of
freedom in the neck provide the necessary redundancy to approximate the
flexibility and redundancy of the human neck when looking at given coordinates. It utilizes an experimentally derived humanoid motion model, which
solves the redundancy and models the joint trajectories and dependencies.
For the Wizard-of-Oz scenario, the head tracker data can be directly mapped
to the joints of the neck, circumventing the motion model.