Analysing Dynamic Change in Faces

人类非常善于理解和解读他人面部的动作。我们可以毫不费力地识别情绪，解读微妙的面部行为，如讥讽的微笑、沉思的皱眉或质疑的表情，但问题仍然存在，我们是如何做到的？我们需要新的基于计算机的工具来探索这个令人着迷的心理学领域。在这个项目中，我们将开发一种新形式的三维摄像系统，它将允许我们记录人们面部的运动，然后处理这些视频信息，以发现构成这些运动的成分。一旦我们能够发现动作的各个部分加在一起形成熟悉的面部表情我们就可以用它来创造新面孔；就像音乐混音台可以让你把不同的声音混合在一起一样，我们将有软件可以让我们把新面孔和我们选择的任何表情混合在一起。使用这个新工具，我们可以进行实验，看看我们是如何处理面部表情并模仿他人的面部动作的。我们将研究如何观察一个人的面部运动可以转化为我们自己的面部运动来模仿动作。因为我们使用的面孔是在计算机中创建的，我们可以以任何我们喜欢的方式操纵它们。这项新技术将使我们能够解决一大批基本问题。如果一个人的脸只从侧面看，或者是倒过来看，我们能模仿他吗？当我们模仿自己、朋友或陌生人时，我们做得更好吗？我们甚至可以创造面部漫画，在那里我们夸大特定的动作，来评估这些面部手势在人类面部处理系统中是如何表现的。更好地理解模仿是如何起作用的，将有助于我们理解社会行为及其发展，也有助于开发能够识别我们的面部表情并对其做出反应的计算机系统。新的人脸混合软件也将有商业应用，例如，它可以用于电脑游戏和娱乐行业。一个人脸上的动作可以作为转移到另一个人脸上做同样动作的指令。除了简单地提供富有表现力的对话外，这将允许配音演员控制角色面部的动作，生成高质量的逼真合成演员或通过手机进行更快更有效的视频会议。

Humans are very good at understanding and interpreting the motion of others peoples faces. We can effortlessly recognise emotions and interpret subtle facial behaviors such as sardonic smiles, thoughtful frowns or questioning looks, but the question remains, how do we do this? We need new computer based tools to be able to explore this fascinating area of psychology. In this project we will develop a new form of three-dimensional camera system that will allow us to record the movements of people's faces and then process this video information to discover the components of movements that go to make them up. Once we are able to discover the parts of movements that add together to make familiar facial expression we can use this to be able to create new faces; in much the same way as a music mixing desk allows you to blend together different sounds, we will have software that allows us to mix new faces with whatever expressions we select. Using this new tool we can then carry out experiments to look at how we process faces and imitate other people's facial movement. We will examine how observing the movement in one persons face can be translated into movements of our own face to imitate the action. Because the faces we use are created in the computer we can manipulate them in any way we like. This new technology will allow us to address a large set of basic questions. Can we imitate a person if the face seen only from the side or if it is shown upside down? Do we do better when we imitate our self, a friend or a stranger? We can even create caricatures of faces, where we exaggerate particular movements, to evaluate how these facial gestures are represented in the human face processing system. A better understanding of how imitation works will help us understand social behaviors and their development, and also help in developing computer systems that can both recognise and react to our facial expressions. The new face mixing software will also have commercial applications, for example it can be of use in the computer games and entertainment industry. Movements from one persons face can be used as the instructions to be transferred to create another persons face making the same movement. This will allow for example a voice actor to control the movements of a characters face in addition to simply providing the expressive dialogue, the generation of high quality realistic synthetic actors or faster more efficient ways to video conference over your mobile phone.