2017 3rd International Conference on Control, Automation and Robotics

Minimalist Mechanical Design and Characterization of an Android for Human

Robot Interaction

I I l I 2
Prashanth N , Karthik Ravi K M , Prashanth Kumar Reddy , Sunil Kumar H S , Jharna Majumdar
I
Department of Mechanical Engineering
2
Department of M Tech Computer Science & Engineering
Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology,
Bengaluru, India
e-mail: shanu.prashanth@gmail.com.karthikravi1992@gmail.com.prashanth.gpkr92@gmail.com.sunihsn@gmail.com.
jharna.majumdar@gmai1.com

Abstract-Design and Development of an Android (A robot research in Human Robot Interaction has been design of
with human resemblance and behaviour) is complex which socially expressive robots. The embodiment design of
requires high level of dexterity and cognitive capability. In the socially expressive robots can be either of Abstract type or
present work, we propose a low cost minimalist mechanical Android type i.e. robots with human resemblance and
design of an android robot called ARIA (Advanced Robot for behaviour. Out of these two, the design of androids has
Interactive Applications) which has 12 Degrees of Freedom
always been one of the fascinating and challenging areas of
(DoF). ARIA is capable of expressing various emotions such as
research in robotics. Research on Android robot tends
Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Anger, and Tiredness etc, along with
towards the robot's physical embodiment design, level and
various neck articulations such as flexion, extension, lateral
form of anthropomorphism, simplicity and complexity of
flexion and rotation. In the present work, we have adopted the
design [1]. In the present work, we will propose a minimalist
minimalist design approach to design the android with an
overall objective of reducing the design complexity and
mechanical design of one such android called "ARIA"
development time. We have described in detail the basic
(Advanced Robot for Interactive Applications) which can be
rationale behind minimalist design approach, the design of
used as an HRI research platform.
facial features, its kinematic linkage and actuation The paper is organized into three main sections; the
mechanisms; and finally we have conducted the experiments to contributions in each section are as follows:
characterize and validate the effectiveness of the facial 1. To start with, we would introduce the rationale behind
expressions of the minimalist android. The experimental minimalist mechanical design approach for androids; its
results reveal that the design trade-offs as a result of need and its benefits.
minimalist mechanical design highly impacts the interactive 2. Next, we would present the minimalist design
dynamics between humans and robot. The cognitive architecture of ARIA and discuss the design configuration
perceptions of humans towards androids demand more using Computer Aided Design (CAD) models of individual
realistic facial expressions which were not possible to achieve facial features such as eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, face, and
using minimally designed ARIA. neck etc. The kinematic linkage, actuation mechanisms and
fabrication of ARIA will also be discussed.
Keywords-minimalist design, human robot interaction,
3. Finally the characterization of various facial
mechanical design, kinematics, social robotics, android design.
expressions of ARIA using design of experiments is
I. INTRODUCTION
presented and the trade-offs in android as a result of
minimalist mechanical design and its effects on interaction
Over many decades, the designs of robots have evolved dynamics between the robot and humans are discussed.
and continue to evolve from science fiction to reality. Today
Robots are not only confined to Industrial applications, they A. Minimalist Design Approach
are also used in whole new range of applications which Minimalist design is a process of eliminating unwanted
include entertainment, health care, elder care, office or over engineering in design of a product by reducing its
assistance etc. As the technology advances, the social gap configuration to necessary elements. The Idea is to simplify
which exists between humans and intelligent robots have the design as much as possible without compromising on the
reduced; this may be attributed to the increased interaction of functional aspect, so that overall development and
human beings with robots. As a result of this, it is imperative maintenance cost comes down. Minimalist design doesn't
to study the interactive dynamics between humans and mean unattractive design; it only means meeting all
robots. The study of this interaction falls under the ambit of functional requirements with minimum elements. See Figure
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Human Robot Interaction 1 for basic cycle of minimalist design approach. The concept
(HRI) is an interdisciplinary field of study encompassing of minimalist design has wide range of application ranging
various areas such as the Engineering, Psychology, from webpage design [2] [3] to industrial product design [4]
Cognitive science, Social science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), [5]. Minimalist design philosophy has been highly
Computer science etc. One of the main focus areas of influenced by prominent Industrial designer Dieter Rams. He

978-1-5090-6088-7117/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 77

has proposed lO principles [6] for a good design. One of his
most famous and influential design principle is "Less, but
better" [7], which is a minimalist design approach.
Identify redundant design
elements which are not
adding any significant value
to the product.
Test the design
Eliminate the
MINIMALIST identified
for functional DESIGN PROCESS
design
requirements.
elements
Rearrange the design
elements to accommodate
changes .
Figure 1. Basic cycle of minimalist design approach
From android design point of view, not much research
has been reported in design of android with minimalist
design approach. However there are many minimally
designed robots for human robot interaction such as Feelix
[8], KASPAR [9], Telenoid [lO] and Hugvie [11]. Some of
the difference between ARIA and the aforementioned robots
include, ARIA is in the form of an android which comprises
neck and head of the size of an average adult. The objective
of ARIA is to achieve minimal anthropomorphism without
affecting the interactive dynamics between humans and
robots. Research on minimalist android design has been very
rarely explored; perhaps one of the reasons for this may be
that the functional requirements of an android and its level of
anthropomorphism make it very difficult to arrive at
minimalist design. Also androids are still seen more as a
research tool rather than a consumer product. In this regard,
we need to ask couple of critical questions:
• How would a minimally expressive android look
like?
• What are the design trade-offs, if an android with
minimalist mechanical design is developed?
• How would humans react to a minimally expressive
android?
In the present work, we would try to answer these critical
questions. Androids are complex systems. Out of all the
physical features of an android; the design of head is the
most complex. Mapping all the facial action coding units [12]
of a biological human head onto a mechanical head is a very
challenging task. None of the androids designed and
developed until now have been able to successfully
accomplish this task. In general, a balance needs to be
achieved between human likeness and technical complexity
and thereby optimizing the cost and time of android
development. One way of achieving this is to reduce as
many degrees of freedom as possible in the android so that
the design is brought down to its essential elements i.e.
minimalistic design. This will bring down the overall
development time and cost of the product. On the other hand
78
it will increase the product's reliability and bring down the
maintenance cost.
II. DESIGN ARCHITECTURE OF ARIA
ARIA consists of 12 Degrees of freedom (DoF) in
totality, Out of which 9 DoF is in the head and the remaining
3 DoF is used for the neck articulation. The various
movements associated with these DoF is given in Table I.
ARIA is capable of expressing various emotions such as
Sadness, Surprise, Anger, Fear and Tiredness etc; it can also
perform various neck articulations such as Flexion,
Extension, Lateral Flexion and Rotation of head.
TABLE I. DEGREES OF FREEDOM (DOF) OF ARIA
SINO Feature Qty Movement DOF
1 Eyes 2 Pitch and Yaw 4
2 Eyelids 2 Pitch 2
3 Eyebrows 2 Roll 2
4 Lower Jaw I Pitch 1
5 Neck I Roll,Pitch and Yaw 3
Total 12
A. Design ofEye Mechanism
Eyes play an important role in any interaction system.
Apart from performing its primary function of providing the
vision; it also sends visual cues such as line of sight, gaze etc.
Designing mechanical eyes is complex because of its range
of motions and miniaturization of the design elements.
Although mechanical eyes in the present context do not
provide any vision to the robot, it definitely plays a central
role in effective Human-Robot Interaction. In the present
work, the eyes constituted almost four Degrees of Freedom
(DoF) of ARIA, i.e. 2 DoF in each eye. The process of
designing mechanical eyes was started with anatomical and
physiological review of human eye [13]-[17]. For an
effective human robot interaction and facial expression, the
mechanical eyes had to replicate various human eye
movements such as "Saccades" which are rapid, ballistic
movements of the eyes that abruptly change the point of
fixation; "Smooth pursuit movements" which are much
slower tracking movements of the eyes and [mally
"Convergence" movement which align the fovea of each eye
with targets located at different distances from the observer.
Convergence is one of the three reflexive visual responses
elicited by interest in a near object [18] . To begin with, a
pair of eyeball with 24mm diameter was designed.
Connecting points were identified and holes were provided
over the surface of eyeball to connect the kinematic linkages.
A universal joint was designed to support the eyeball at the
centre to facilitate the pitch (up-down orientation) and yaw
(left-right orientation) movement of the eyes as shown in the
Fig. 2a. A simple 4 bar linkage mechanism was used to
connect the eye balls to the actuators. A pair of micro servo
motors was used to actuate the pitch and yaw movements of
each eye. In total four micro servo motors were used to
actuate both the eyes.

Figure 2. U-Joint for eyeball mechanism and eyeball kinematic linkage
Mechanism ( Horizontal Plane-Pitch Movement)
Fig. 2b shows the kinematic linkage mechanism for pitch
movement of the eyeball. Where Rph, Sp, Lp are the horn
radius, input angular displacement and length of the rigid
connecting link respectively for the pitch movements. Rb is
the radius of eyeball. S pb is the resultant angular
displacement of eyeball during pitch. Similar mechanism
was implemented for yaw mechanism. The relationship
between the input and resultant angular displacement for
pitch movements can be given by a simple equation as
follows:
Rph Op
8pb = Rb
(1)
We could have designed the kinematic linkage
mechanism such that only 2 motors could jointly Actuate
both the eyeballs (one for pitch and other for yaw
movement), this would have also ensured that both the
eyeballs would move in unison giving the perfect saccadic
and smooth pursuit movement of the eyes, however, it would
have been impossible for us to achieve the convergence eye
movement, hence two independent motors were used for
each eye, this implied that a proper synchronization of eye
movement was necessary so that both the eyes could move
in unison; this however was taken care by the motor control
system of ARIA. The arrangement of 4 independent servo
motors and the kinematic linkages are shown in figure 3. The
figure also shows the internal framework of the chassis on
which all four servo motors and other essential design
elements are mounted. The chassis was designed with
modular design arrangement to address any misalignment
issues.
..,,=-. POch unk
Modular
arrangement to
make alignment
adjustments
Figure 3. Arrangements of motors,kinematic linkage and chassis for
eyeball movement
B. Design ofEyelid Mechanism
Design of eyelids was straight forward as each eyelid
contributed to one degree of freedom to ARIA. A simply
79
supported eyelid held in between two holders was designed,
which was connected to the actuator using the 4 bar linkage
mechanism as shown in Fig. 4. By studying the physiology
of eyelids we understand that the human beings use both
upper and lower eyelid, for instance during closure of eyes,
Upper eyelid move downward and lower eyelid move
upwards and nasally [19], from the empirical observations,
the lower eyelids are least noticed in humans as compared to
upper eyelids, hence we decided not to incorporate the same,
this was in line with the minimalist design approach.
____
_ '�:�:�:d
<\\
''-'''--'--t--- --- -_. �
Eyeball
Figure 4. Eyelid kinematic linkage mechanism
The main factor which influenced the design of eyelid
was the voluntary blinks (winking) of eyelids. Since the
eyelids were having only 1 DOF each, we could have
designed the kinematic linkage in such way that both the
eyelids were actuated by a single motor, this would have not
affected the involuntary blinks, since during involuntary
blinks both the eyelids close together, however voluntary
blinks such as winking i.e. closing one eye would have been
impossible, hence we decided to use independent motors for
each eyelid, so that ARIA could express various emotions.
C. Design ofEyebrow Mechanism
Out of all the design elements of ARIA, Eyebrow design
was the simplest. Eyebrows of ARIA were designed such
that it had only rotary motion and no translation motions.
Also the two eyebrows were independently actuated to
provide more degrees of freedom, so that ARIA could rotate
its eyebrow independently. From control point of view, we
fixed three distinct positions for eyebrow such as Neutral
(Default Position), Raised, and Lowered as shown in the Fig.
5. Fig. 6 shows the eyebrows & mountings of its servo
drives.
QQQ
Q' Q' g'
. . . . . .
- - -
/ g-g- Q'
,. . . . . . .
- - -
Neutral Raised Lowered
Figure 5. Three distinct positions of eyebrows and various facial
expressions by utilizing three distinct positions of eyebrows
Figure 6. Eyebrows and servo drives mounted inside ARIA's face to drive
eyebrows
D. Design a/Face of great importance for minimal human resemblance [20].
Face is the focal point of interaction vis-a-vis Human­ ARIA's face was designed without nose and lips to simplify
Human Interaction and/or Human Robot Interaction. Design the design process. The Lower jaw or mandible mechanism
of an Android's face, i.e. its shape, size, aspect ratio etc [20] of ARIA was modelled after the human mandible. Lower
are the principal factors which would influence the Jaw contributed 1 DOF to ARIA (See Fig. 8).
communication modalities in HRI. The relationship between
robot's physical Appearance and the interest that it evokes Point of connection
between Link &
among people can be explained using "Uncanny valley" lowerJaw

effect which was proposed by Masahiro Mori in the late

1970s [21]. Mori proposed that as the Robot's level of
anthropomorphism increases, the positive interest that it
would evoke from the people would also increase, however lowerJaw

this effect would start to reverse from a point where the

robot would start to evoke negative interest from the people, Figure 8. Kinematic linkage mechanism for lower jaw
resulting in decrease of its acceptance. Mori termed this
region of negative emotional response as uncanny valley The servo motor in turn was fixed to the base or chassis.
(see Fig. 7). At the bottom of the uncanny valley, the robot We started design of ARIA's face by mapping its boundary
would appear and move like a zombie evoking the least against a Computer Generated Image (CGI) of a human
interest from the people. The uncanny valley effect is present model. Once the shape and size of ARIA's face was
in both inanimate and animate robots, but the emotional established, it was fabricated (see Fig. 9) using Rapid
response would amplify for animate robots. Mori cautioned Prototyping technology. The disfigurement of face arising
the robot designers to ensure that increased due to lack of nose and lips were overcome by placing a
anthropomorphism of robots need not necessarily improve commercially available latex mask over ARIA's face. The
the emotional response from people. latex mask increased the level of anthropomorphism of
ARIA. Other than increasing the human likeness, the latex
Moving Healthy mask had no other role to play in terms of facial expression.
Person i.e. the latex mask didn't have any actuation points or
... �!!Il...
deformities. This is further discussed in the facial expression

1
characterization section.
Animal
.. 1 ..
...
. .

.
. •

..
.

... ...
.
.

-
.

..
.

Industrial ..
• .
•
�
...
• .

.
• .
..
. ... ..
. . .. . .
.
. .. �
-- --
Human Likeness Corpse "." _ Prosthetic
Hand Figure 9. ARIA's face from CAD to reality

Zombie __

Figure 7. Uncanny valley as proposed by masahiro mori

Uncanny valley is not devoid of any criticisms. Hanson

has criticized the uncanny valley by arguing that even robots
with an abstract design or least anthropomorphism can also
elicit uncanny valley effect [22]. In general, the degree of
human resemblance and human behaviour should match. For
example a robot which has an appearance like an appliance
would elicit least expectation, while a robot with high degree
of human appearance would elicit higher expectation [23].
Considering the minimalist design approach of the present
work, we had very little scope to explore the higher level of
anthropomorphism in our robot. This was intentional, as the
level of anthropomorphism increases so does the design
complexity of the robot. However a robot needs to have
minimal degree of human resemblance and behaviour so that
Yow
it can be called as an android. For instance empirical work
has shown that face aspect ratio, mouth, nose and eyelids are Figure 10. Kinematic linkages and servo drive arrangement for neck

80
E. Design ofNeck
ARIA's Neck was designed with 3 Degrees of freedom
to provide Roll, Yaw and Pitch movements. The
Arrangement of motors and kinematic linkages are shown in
the Fig. 10.
The Roll, Pitch and Yaw Dynamixel servo motors were
connected in daisy chain arrangement and were physically
linked using aluminium frames to reduce the overall weight
of the robot. It has to be noted that, we have not used any
mechanical stoppers in our design and the robot was free to
rotate over a range of angles. This was intentional in the
view of reducing the unnecessary design elements. However
the range of motion of neck was fixed by control system
using a control algorithm.
F. Fabrication ofARIA
Miniaturization, curvilinear surface profile and tight
tolerance of certain design elements in ARIA meant that we
had to fabricate using additive manufacturing. Hence
elements such as eyelids, eyeballs, miniature universal joint,
TABLE II. DESIGN TRADE-OFFS AND ITS IMPACT
eyelid holders etc were fabricated using Stereolithography
(SLA) based Rapid Prototyping (RP) technique. SLA utilizes
curable polymer resins and LASER to build the material in
layers. It is capable of delivering high surface finish which is
crucial for fitments. Face was fabricated using Fused
Deposition Modelling (FDM) based Rapid Prototyping as
the surface finish of the face was unimportant since ARIA's
face was covered using the Latex mask. FDM based Rapid
Prototyping has several advantages such as cost
effectiveness, lower post processing & ease of use [24] [25].
III. FACIAL EXPRESSION CHARACTERIZATION
ARIA is capable of expressing various emotions such as
surprise, sadness, tiredness, fear, winking etc. It also uses
various neck articulations along with the aforesaid
expressions to convey its emotions. However as a result of
Minimalist design approach ARIA suffered from lack of few
essential facial features, these are given in Table II along
with their impact.

Design Trade-offs Impact

Non-Pliable Skin - Lack of Positive Expressions such as

Static Upper and Lower Lips happiness, joy, relief etc
- Reduced Anthropomorphism
Protruded Eyebrows
- Reduced Anthropomorphism
Lack of Lower Eyelids

TABLE Ill. ACTUATION UNITS AND FACS AU FORARlA's FACIAL

FACS Action Unit

SINO Facial Expression Actuation Unit
(AU)
I Neutral - AUO
Inner Eyebrows Up
AU 1+ AU 2+AU
2 Surprise Eyelid Up
5+AU 26
Jaw Drop
Inner Eyebrow Down
3 Sadness Tilted Neck AU 42 + AU 55+AU 7
Eyelid Down
Eyebrow Lower
AU 2+AU5+
4 Anger Upper Eye lid Raiser
AU 24
Eyelid Up
Flexion
5 Tiredness Eyelid Down AU 53+ AU 7 +AU 26
Jaw Drop (Mild)
Inner Eyebrow Up
6 Fear Eyeballs Converge AU 1+ AU66+AU26
Jaw Drop (Mild)
Nod Head ( Up and Down) AU M59+
7 Laughter
Jaw Drop AU 26
8 Wink Eyelid Open/Close AU 46
9 Eyes Closed - AU 43

The lack of posItIve emotional expressions such as
pleasantness, happiness or joy meant that, it was impossible
to ascertain whether the robot was enjoying the interaction or
not. Hence we incorporated a method of audio-visual cue
such as laughter to convey the positive response of ARIA
during an interaction. This was achieved by making ARIA to
rhythmically nod its head, open and close its mouth (Lower
Jaw), while an auditory cue of laughter played in the
background (using external speakers). The Facial Action
coding system (FACS) [12] were used to map the actuation
units (9 DOF in face) of ARIA to produce various human
facial expressions.
Fig. 11 shows a glimpse of various emotions and neck
articulation expressed by ARIA. The control points for
various facial expressions and their corresponding Action
Units (AU) as per FACS are given in Table III.

81
 _ MEAN SCALE -0- MEAN RESPONSE TIME (SEC)

LatemlFlexioll Gazing Gazing Tiredncss
Sidcways DC)\\1l
Figure I I . Glimpse of various facial and neck articulation of ARIA
A. Experiment
Experiments were conducted to validate the effectiveness
of ARIA's minimal facial expressions. A sample size of
N= 30 participants comprising both male and female with an
age range of 19 to 28 years and mean age of 21.33 (SD= 2.91)
were involved in the experiment. These participants were
asked to interact with ARIA, identify its facial expressions
and rate the same on a Semantic differential scale of 1 to 7
with two anchors being machine like at 1 and human like at
7. Similar experiments have been conducted in the past by
MacDorman [26], Powers and Kiesler [27]. However in the
current experiment we also included the response time, i.e.
time taken by the participants to identify the facial
expressions. Semantic differential scale [28] was used
instead of Likert scale [29] since it reduced the acquiescence
bias without affecting the psychometric quality [30].
Closed Skcping Figure 12. Mean semantic differential scale and mean response time in
Eycs
seconds for various expressions
B. Results and Discussions
Fig. 12 shows the response of the participants, i.e. mean
values of semantic differential scale and the mean response
time in seconds for various facial expressions and
behaviours of ARIA. From the results, it can be inferred that
the participants were able to easily identify various
behaviours of the robot such as 'wakeup', 'sleeping',
'winking', and 'closed eyes' etc with lower response time.
For the facial expression, the majority of the participants
were able to recognize 'Sad' and 'Tiredness' leaning
towards the human likeness. Expressions such as 'surprise',
'anger' and 'laughter' received mixed reactions which were
rated below par by the participants. They also took longer
response time. Out of all the expressions, 'fear' received the
lowest rating on a 7 point scale. Overall the correlation
between semantic differential scale and response time was
found to be -0.80. The detailed result is given in the Table
IV.

TABLEIV. DETAILS OF MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION FOR VARlOUS EXPRESSIONS

SCALE RESPONSE TIME (SEC)

(1-7)
EXPRESSION
Mean SD Mean SD

WAKE UP 5.80 1.13 7.22 3.28

GAZE DOWN 5.60 1.19 7.58 3.25
WINK 6.40 0.67 3.85 1.76
CLOSE EYES 6.23 0.73 2.59 1.01
SAD 4.67 2.76 7.02 3.53
SURPRISE 3. 70 3.87 7.39 2.64
LAUGH 3.43 3.67 10.21 5.72
TIREDNESS 4.83 2.20 7.36 4.19
OPEN MOUTH 4.90 3.23 6.91 1.85

GOTO SLEEP 6.20 0.76 7.78 2.13

FEAR 2.97 2.97 12.31 4.36

ANGER 3. 73 3.23 11.32 3.39

TABLE V.INTERESTING REACTIONS FROM PARTICIPANTS

Expressions Reaction from Participants

Laughter ( Without Audio Cue) Robot is Nodding its Head Robot is Coughing
Robot has Closed its Eyes
Tiredness Robot is Feeling Sleepy
-
Gaze Down Robot is Sad
Fear Robot is Surprised Robot is Shocked
Surprise Robot has Opened Mouth -

82
 Some of the interesting responses from the participants
during the experimentation are given in Table V. [1]
It is quite evident from the above results that the
anthropomorphism of the robot is reduced due to many
factors associated with the design trade-offs resulting from [2]
the minimalist design. Also the fear expression in the robot
mainly depended on convergence of eyes, however from the
[3]
results it can be seen that participants were unable to
recognize this expression, Thus it implies that we can avoid
[4]
the convergence of eyes and thereby further reduce Degrees
of Freedom in the robot. The results obtained from the
[5]
elaborate experiment have suggested that that the cognitive
perception of humans towards androids demands more
realistic facial expressions and it is impossible to achieve the [6]
same using static skin. It would be interesting to see whether
the expressions can be made to appear more human like if [7]
the latex mask is replaced with that of silicone mask.
[8]
IV. CONCLUSION
An android called ARIA (Advanced Robot for
[9]
Interactive Applications) with 12 Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
is designed and developed with minimalist mechanical
design approach. The rationale of minimalist design
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The research work proposed in this paper is carried out at
the Centre for Robotics Research, Nitte Meenakshi Institute
of Technology (NMIT), Bengaluru, INDIA.
The authors express their sincere gratitude to Prof N.R
Shetty, Advisor and Dr H.C Nagaraj, Principal, NMIT, for
giving constant encouragement and support to carry out
multidisciplinary research. The authors extend their sincere
thanks and gratitude to the Vision Group on Science and
Technology (VGST), Government of Karnataka for
providing financial support to setup the infrastructure
required to carry out the research at NMIT.
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