Articulated Humanoid Head for a Robot Receptionist Capable of Natural Human Interaction

2026-07-18

AI Summary

This work addresses the limitations of existing humanoid robot heads—such as high cost, mechanical complexity, and poor environmental adaptability—that hinder natural and efficient human–robot interaction. To overcome these challenges, the authors propose a highly realistic robotic head system tailored for reception scenarios, featuring a 21-degree-of-freedom facial and neck mechanism coupled with silicone skin to produce expressive and lifelike gestures. The system integrates lightweight AI models: SCRFD combined with ArcFace and ByTetrack enables robust face detection and re-identification, while Whisper and Llama facilitate real-time spoken dialogue. Implemented on dedicated hardware, the system demonstrates high computational efficiency. User studies indicate a strong perceived anthropomorphism, scoring 4.13 out of 5, and achieve notable performance in both interaction naturalness and person re-identification.

Abstract

Humanoid robots have become increasingly popular in applications such as social interaction, education, and service roles, which drives the need for more natural and efficient human-robot interactions. However, currently available humanoid heads often face limitations, including high costs, mechanical complexity, and limited adaptability across diverse environments. To address these challenges, we present an articulated humanoid robot head designed for a receptionist role, integrating a mechanical structure with 21 degrees of freedom (DoF), including mechanisms for the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, and neck, and covered with realistic silicone skin to achieve a human-like appearance and expression. The system integrates a model-based architecture that combines SCRFD, ArcFace, and ByTetrack for face recognition and Llama and Whisper for natural language processing, with hardware support enabling real-time operations and human re-identification. The conversational ability and re-identification capabilities of the humanoid robot head were quantitatively measured, while its emotional expressiveness and human likeness were evaluated through a user study, achieving an average human likeness score of 4.13 out of 5.

Problem

• humanoid robot
• human-robot interaction
• articulated head
• adaptability
• mechanical complexity

Innovation

• articulated humanoid head
• 21 degrees of freedom
• real-time face re-identification
• multimodal interaction architecture
• human-like expressiveness