Facial and gestural expression generation for robot partners

Interaction with a robot partner requires many elements, including not only speech, but embodiment as well. Gestures and facial expressions of the robot partner are also important for natural communication. This paper proposes a control system for the robot partner's facial and gestural expression. First, we describe the control structure of the robot partner and we explain the architecture of the robot system. Next, we propose a gesture expression system based on Laban movement analysis and interactive evolution strategy. Then, facial expression generation is discussed. Finally, we show experimental results of the proposed method, and discuss the future direction on this research.