Animatronic robots aim to enable natural human-robot interaction through lifelike facial expressions. However, generating realistic, speech-synchronized robot expressions is challenging due to the complexities of facial biomechanics and responsive motion synthesis. This paper presents a principled, skinning-centric approach to drive animatronic robot facial expressions from speech. The proposed approach employs linear blend skinning (LBS) as the core representation to guide tightly integrated innovations in embodiment design and motion synthesis. LBS informs the actuation topology, enables human expression retargeting, and allows speech-driven facial motion generation. The proposed approach is capable of generating highly realistic, real-time facial expressions from speech on an animatronic face, significantly advancing robots' ability to replicate nuanced human expressions for natural interaction.

翻译：仿真机器人旨在通过逼真的面部表情实现自然的人机交互。然而，由于面部生物力学和响应式动作合成的复杂性，生成与语音同步的逼真机器人表情仍是一项挑战。本文提出了一种基于蒙皮核心原理的方法，用于从语音驱动仿真机器人的面部表情。所提方法采用线性混合蒙皮作为核心表示，以指导在具身设计与动作合成中的紧密集成创新。线性混合蒙皮不仅为驱动拓扑提供依据，还能实现人类表情的重定向，并支持语音驱动的面部运动生成。该方法能够从语音中实时生成高度逼真的面部表情，显著提升了机器人复现细腻人类表情以实现自然交互的能力。