Analysing Dynamic Change in Faces

人类非常善于理解和解释别人脸部的动作。我们可以毫不费力地识别情绪并解读微妙的面部行为，如嘲讽的微笑、深思的皱眉或质疑的眼神，但问题仍然存在，我们如何做到这一点？我们需要新的基于计算机的工具来探索这一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，以发现构成它们的运动的组成部分。一旦我们能够发现组合在一起形成熟悉的面部表情的动作部分，我们就可以利用这一点来创造新的面孔；就像音乐混音台允许你将不同的声音混合在一起一样，我们将拥有允许我们将新面孔与我们选择的任何表情混合在一起的软件。使用这个新工具，我们可以进行实验，看看我们是如何处理人脸和模仿别人的面部动作的。我们将研究如何将观察一个人面部的动作转化为我们自己的面部动作来模仿这个动作。因为我们使用的人脸是在计算机中创建的，所以我们可以以任何我们喜欢的方式来操作它们。这项新技术将使我们能够解决一大组基本问题。如果只从侧面看到一个人的脸，或者如果它是颠倒的，我们能模仿一个人吗？当我们模仿自己、朋友或陌生人时，我们做得更好吗？我们甚至可以制作脸部漫画，夸大特定的动作，以评估这些面部姿势在人脸处理系统中是如何表现的。更好地理解模仿是如何工作的，将有助于我们了解社会行为及其发展，也有助于开发既能识别我们的面部表情又能对我们的面部表情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。一个人面部的动作可以被用作指令来转移，以创建做出相同动作的另一个人的面部。这将允许例如配音演员控制角色面部的动作，除了简单地提供富有表现力的对话、生成高质量的逼真合成演员或更快、更高效地通过手机进行视频会议。

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.