  This article proposes an emotive lifelike robotic face, called ExpressionBot,
that is designed to support verbal and non-verbal communication between the
robot and humans, with the goal of closely modeling the dynamics of natural
face-to-face communication. The proposed robotic head consists of two major
components: 1) a hardware component that contains a small projector, a fish-eye
lens, a custom-designed mask and a neck system with 3 degrees of freedom; 2) a
facial animation system, projected onto the robotic mask, that is capable of
presenting facial expressions, realistic eye movement, and accurate visual
speech. We present three studies that compare Human-Robot Interaction with
Human-Computer Interaction with a screen-based model of the avatar. The studies
indicate that the robotic face is well accepted by users, with some advantages
in recognition of facial expression and mutual eye gaze contact.
