華裔科學家主導研製出具有表情的愛因斯坦機器人（圖）

原文報道：http://www.livescience.com/technology/090710-robot-expression.html

Freaky Robot Is a Real Einstein
怪異的機器人，真實的愛因斯坦

By LiveScience Staff
posted: 2009-07-10 ET

Albert Einstein is practically alive and smiling in the guise of a new robot that looks eerily like the great scientist and generates facial expressions that take robotics to a new level. "As far as we know, no other research group has used machine learning to teach a robot to make realistic facial expressions," said Tingfan Wu, a computer science graduate student from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦幾乎復活了，這個新機器人的微笑表情讓這個偉大的科學家活靈活現，該機器人產生的表情把機器人技術帶到了一個新的水平。「據我們所知，還沒有其他任何研究團隊運用了機器學習能力，讓一個機器人產生真實的臉部表情，」吳亭范說，他是加利福利亞大學聖地亞哥分校的一名計算機科學專業的研究生。

To teach this, the team connected tiny motors via strings to about 30 of the robot's facial muscles. Programmers then directed the Albert Einstein head to twist and turn its face in numerous directions, a process called "body babbling," which is similar to the random movements that infants use when learning to control their bodies and reach for objects. The researchers made some video of robot's expressions that are disturbingly lifelike.
要能讓機器人會笑，該研究團隊得將微型馬達通過導線連接到大約30塊機器人的臉部肌肉。編程人員然後指揮這名阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦的頭轉動，臉部可以面向各種方向，這個過程被稱作「body babbling「。（譯者註：不理解這個機器人技術術語的確切含義），這個就像嬰兒在學習控制他們的身體以接觸一些物體時，產生的隨機的運動動作。研究人員製作了一些機器人表情的視頻，那些表情看上去跟真人極度的相似。

During body babbling, the Einstein robot could see itself in a mirror and analyze its movements using facial expression detection software created at UCSD and called CERT (Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox). The robot used this data as an input for its machine learning algorithms and created a map between its facial expressions and the movements of its muscle motors.
在」body babbling「過程中，愛因斯坦機器人能夠通過一面鏡子看到它自己，運用一個臉部表情檢測軟體分析它的運動，這個軟體叫作CERT（計算機表情識別工具箱）由加利福利亞大學聖地亞哥分校發明。該機器人用這些數據作為其機器學習演算法的輸入數據，產生一個臉部表情和相應肌肉馬達運動之間的信息存儲分布圖。

After creating the basic facial expression map, the robot learned to make new facial expressions — ranging from angry to surprised to sad — that it had never encountered before. For instance, the Einstein robot learned to narrow its eyebrows, where the inner eyebrows move together and upper eyelids close slightly
在產生基本臉部表情分布圖后，機器人可以表達出新的臉部表情——從憤怒到驚訝到悲傷——這些以前還從來沒有出現過。比如，愛因斯坦機器人收緊眉毛，就是讓其兩根眉毛內側靠近，上眼瞼輕微閉合。

The robot head probably isn't realistic enough to pass for a real-life Einstein, and the researchers noted that some of the robot's facial expressions are still awkward. The interactions between facial muscles and skin in humans are almost certainly more complex than their robotic model, Wu said. Currently, a trained person must manually configure the motors to pull the facial muscles in the right combinations so that the body babbling can occur. In the future, the team hopes to automate more of the process.
這個機器人的頭部可能還不能像一個真實的愛因斯坦那樣逼真，研究人員也指出該機器人的一些表情看起來還有一些笨拙。人類臉部肌肉和皮膚之間的互動遠比他們的機器人模型複雜，吳亭范說。目前，一名經過訓練的人還得手動配置馬達，以使得臉部肌肉處於一個正確的配合狀態，body babbling就能實現。該研究團體希望將來能自動實現該過程。

Still, the researchers hope their work will lead to insight into how humans learn facial expressions. The researchers admit that the body babbling method may not be the most efficient way for a robot to learn to smile and frown, so they are exploring other approaches too. "Currently, we are working on a more accurate facial expression generation model, as well as a systematic way to explore the model space efficiently," Wu said.
此外研究人員希望，他們的工作能更好地理解人類臉部表情是如何實現的。研究人員承認」body babbling「可能不是最有效的方法，讓機器人獲得微笑和皺眉的表情，因此他們也在探索其他方法。」目前，我們正在研究一個更精確的臉部表情產生模式，以及一個讓模型空間更為有效的系統方法，「吳亭范說道。

Wu's findings were presented on June 6 at the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning in Shanghai, China. Javier Movellan, director of UCSD's Machine Perception Laboratory, was the senior author on the presented research.
吳的探索已經發表於6月6日在中國上海召開的國際電氣與電子工程師學會有關發展與學習技術的國際會議上。加利福利亞大學聖地亞哥分校機器感覺實驗室的主任賈維爾·莫沃蘭，是那篇在大會發言的研究論文的主要作者。

譯者註：吳亭范2000至2004年就讀於台灣國立大學。他的個人主頁是http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~t3wu/index.php

太可怕了。機器人不能太像人。