Virtual human with regard to physical contact and eye contact

Abstract

In the future a virtual human is expected to play important roles such as a character, an avatar and a robot in the amusement field. To realize a virtual human computer-graphics has advantages in cost and maintenance. However, a human feels a slight discomfort at the robot's face that is represented by using CG because a robot's head in the virtual world does not fit in the environment of the real world. To resolve the problem, we have proposed a robot's head by using CG and some sensors that respond to a surrounding environment. Here, focusing on physical contact, this paper proposes a robot's head using CG and a touch screen panel. Also, we propose robot eyes that reflect a surrounding environment realistically toward the realization of eye contact. Some experiments show that the robot's face changes according to an environmental change like a human in the real world. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.