Welcome to the offical website of the Articulated Head - the Interactive Robot-Art Installation. The Articulated Head is the engineering realisation of an artistic vision of the world-renowned Australian performance artist Stelarc. The intention is to develop a robotic system that will model behaviour of "an active listener" engaged in interaction with other human agents.

The Articulated Head (AH) is part of a wider 'Thinking Head Project', one of three Thinking Systems Special Initiatives grants jointly funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC), for the years 2006 to 2011. The project is based at MARCS Auditory Laboratories at University of Western Sydney (UWS) Bankstown campus, but drawing on the resources of the ARC Human Communication Science Network (HCSNet), has sites at RMIT; Macquarie University; Flinders University; University of Canberra; Technical University, Berlin; Denmark Technical University; and Carnegie Mellon.




The AH system consists of an industrial robot arm (Fanuc LR Mate 200ic) with a 17 inch LCD mounted on the end effecter. The LCD screen displays a 3D rendering of a head (Prosthetic Head) that resembles the artist Stelarc. The system also contains an array of sensors including auditory localisation, stereo vision and monocular vision that provide situational awareness for the robotic 'agent'. The complete system is driven by a novel 'attention model', an algorithmic implementation that emulates simple brain functions. The system is driven by a component-based software architecture.

The Articulated Head is currently on display at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.