Human-like robot head that has olfactory sensation and facial color expression

The authors have been developing new head mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that has the ability to communicate naturally with a human by expressing human-like emotion. In this paper, they focus on the olfactory sensation and facial color that humans use to communicate with each other. Human's olfactory sensation recognizes over thousand different smells. The WE-3RIV (Waseda eye No.3 refined IV) developed can recognize the smell of alcohol, ammonia and cigarette smoke. The olfactory sensor consists of four semiconductor gas sensors. WE-3RIV is able to recognize certain smells within a few seconds of being presented with the smell stimuli by using the sensor output and the rate of changing of output. Further, we developed the facial color expression using red electro-luminescent sheets. By adding the facial color expression, the expressiveness of the robot and its facial expression are improved.