Social Robot

This is my M.Sc thesis project. The focus of this project was to construct a humanoid head that had sufficient degrees of freedom to mimic human facial expressions. Also, it should be able to track human faces and play a simple game using color detection. The robot has fourteen degrees of freedom: three in the neck, one in the lips, four in the eyes, two in the eyelids, and four in the eyebrows.

In this project Kinect sensor was used to detect a human skeleton frame. Once the robot realizes the human skeleton, it can use inverse kinematics to track human parts such as the head or hand. The robot could use tracking hands and face in a color detection game. The robot can show an appropriate response to the person who is playing the game.

In the first step, I designed the head in SolidWorks and optimized the mechanisms. When I finished the design, I manufactured the parts and assembled the robot. I used color detection thanks to the Kinect sensor, and then I used a skeleton detection program to detect the head and hand.