Technabob » expression

Emotigraph Has Its Many Moods

Technabob — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:00:18 +0000

Do you have mood swings? Then you owe it to the next person about to cross the threshold into your cubicle to make sure they know if you’re happy, sad, or going to chew their head off for taking to you. Here’s a fun invention which you can use to give people the heads up on your state of mind.

Emotigraph is a laser-cut wooden plaything with a mechanism which lets you change its face between a variety of moods. Simply turn the disc underneath Emotigraph, and it’ll go from elated, to depressed, to non-plussed in seconds (just like you.)

The exact expressions on the included disc are “happy,” “angry,” ” sad,” and “surprised.” However, additional discs can be purchased for moods like “bashful,” “sorry,” “whisper,” and “maybe.” The interchangeable discs are why its called the Emotigraph (“emotion phonograph”, get it?)

Emotigraph was designed by Matthew Garten, who has shown the pieces at MakerFaire, and also has instructions for making your own over on Instructables. But the easiest way to get an Emotigraph is to head over to Etsy, where you can grab one for just $29.50(USD). You’ll still need to tackle what looks like a pretty involved assembly process, but that’s part of the fun anyhow.

MIT Engineer Develops Glasses that Read Facial Expressions

Shane McGlaun — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:57:48 +0000

I have watched the show Lie to Me and I really like it. It’s cool that the character is supposed to be able to tell when someone is lying just by their facial expressions. I wish I could do that sometimes, it would make life much easier. An engineer at MIT named Rosalind Picard has developed a cool set of glasses that claims to be able to read expressions and tell the wearer what the person they are talking to is thinking.

The glasses have a small camera in them that reads the face of the other person and looks at 24 different feature points. The points are then fed into a database to determine what the person is thinking or feeling between six states including thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested, confused, and disagreeing.

The software portion was developed by Rana el Kaliouby. The pair claims that the average person could determine what a real person was thinking by looking at facial expressions 54% of the time and the glasses got it right 64% of the time.

[via CNET]

Robot Learns to Make Facial Expressions, is Rewarded With a Measly “Signal”

Lambert Varias — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:41:47 +0000

At least dogs get food when they get things right. This poor robot Einstein, made by computer scientists from the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, was given time to play with its 31 artificial facial muscles while “staring” at its reflection in the mirror. The robot was also equipped with a camera as well as facial recognition software, so that when it happened upon a human facial expression while it was experimenting, the software would send a “reward signal” to the robot. That must have been one hell of a signal.

The scientists’ next goal is to get the Einstein robot to socialize, and eventually robot tormentors tutors.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Marian Bartlett, a facial recognition expert who was a part of the experiment, said that the aim is to use robots to conduct one-on-one tutoring, which she says can improve learning “by as much as two standard deviations.” Sounds like they want our kids to go insane.

[via Wired]

Alter Ego 3d Facial Animations Are Really, Really, Real

Technabob — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:43:24 +0000

This amazing combination of technology and graphical artistry makes for some of the most realistic and precise 3D animated facial expressions I’ve ever seen come out of a computer.

Pendulum Studios’, AlterEgo division combines facial expression software, precision motion capture, and good old-fashioned artistry to reproduce the most minute facial movements you’ve ever seen on a digital actor. Every wrinkle, crinkle and twitch is reproduced with startling accuracy.

The guys over at AlterEgo have developed proprietary “facial performance software”, which combined with special mo-cap hardware, can produce unbelievably real digital faces in record time. Their work has been featured in motion pictures, commercials, animation and video games including Dark Sector and the forthcoming Silent Hill 5.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

After you’ve watched the lo-res video above, be sure to check out AlterEgo’s Hi-Res demo videos to see just how amazing this stuff truly is.

[via TechEBlog]