Performance of Actuators for Facial Robot: A Comparison Study Between Electric Motor and Dielectric Elastomer Actuator

Realistic eye motion of humanoid robots can significantly improve the efficiency of information exchange between humans and robots. Up to now, humanoid robots are mainly driven by motors. On the other hand, with mechanisms and performances close to the natural muscle, the dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) has been emerging technology for actuating the humanoid robot. While both actuators can drive the eyeball to achieve human-like movement, little work has been done on comparing their performance quantitatively. To compare these two actuators utilized in humanoid robots, we made artificial eyes with motors and DEA respectively. In this paper, we compare the artificial eyes of these two actuators in terms of structure, working principle, equipment, motion response, efficiency and drive mode, etc. The result describes the characteristics of the two actuators and provides a basis for selection for various application scenarios.