Museum Guide Robot by Considering Static and Dynamic Gaze Expressions to Communicate with Visitors

Human eyes not only serve the function of enabling us "to see" something, but also perform the vital role of allowing us "to show" our gaze for non-verbal communication. We have investigated the static design and dynamic behaviors of robot heads for suitable gaze communication with humans while giving a friendly impression. In this paper, we focus on how the robot's impression is affected by its eye blink and eyeball movement synchronized with head turning. Through experiments with human participants, we found that robot head turning with eye blinks give a friendly impression while robot head turning without eye blinks is suitable for making people shift their attention towards the robot's gaze direction. These findings are very important for communication robots such as museum guide robots. Therefore to demonstrate our approach, we developed a museum guide robot system employing suitable facial design and gaze behavior based on all of our findings.