Design and Implementation of the Bio-inspired Facial Expressions for Medical Mannequin

A medical mannequin is an intelligent device used in hospitals for providing medical students hands-on learning experience without the risk of injury to a human subject. The closer these mannequins become to mimicking the functionality of a human being, the better the quality of training. In this paper, we report the development of a biomimetic mechatronic face with eyes, skin and neck having human-like performance. The face was created with 13 degrees of freedom to incorporate all the action units necessary to reconstruct 7 basic expressions. The eyes were able to perform blinking, movement, iris dilation, and object tracking. The neck was a Stewart Platform with 6 degrees of freedom and was capable of translation and rotation that mimic the human vertebrae. A durable artificial skin was developed using silicone elastomer to replicate the texture and appearance of real human skin.