Digital Equipment Corporation

Compaq Computer Corporation, Inc.

Keith Waters

Sing Bing Kang

James Matthew Rehg

Andrew Dean Christian

Jean-Manuel Van Thong

Brian Lyndall Avery

William D Goldenthal

Thomas M Levergood

Maria Loughlin

An active public user interface in a computerized kiosk senses humans visually using movement and color to detect changes in the environment indicating the presence of people. Interaction spaces are defined and the system records an initial model of its environment which is updated over time to reflect the addition or subtraction of inanimate objects and to compensate for lighting changes. The system develops models of the moving objects and is thereby able to track people as they move about the interaction spaces. A stereo camera system further enhances the system's ability to sense location and movement. The kiosk presents audio and visual feedback in response to what it &ldquo;sees.&rdquo;

Method and apparatus for visual sensing of humans for active public interfaces

A technique for providing a computer generated face having coordinated eye and head movement is realized by providing a computer generated movable head and at least one computer generated movable eye. The movement of the computer generated movable head and the movement of the at least one computer generated movable eye are coordinated such that the movement of the computer generated movable head follows the movement of the at least one computer generated movable eye.

Technique for providing a computer generated face having coordinated eye

A method for mapping a digitized image of a face on to a reference wireframe topology in a computer system is provided, the image composed of pixels, the wireframe composed of interconnected nodes, the method including the steps of determining facial features from the pixels, determining facial landmark points from the facial features, computing displacements for each one of the interconnected nodes, and manually finetuning the displacements in response to the step of computing.

Facial image method and apparatus for semi-automatically mapping a face

A method for mapping a digitized image of a face to a wireframe is provided. The wireframe is composed of a plurality of nodes connected by lines. The method includes the steps of detecting a plurality of facial features from the plurality of pixels of a reference facial image. Corresponding facial landmark nodes in the wireframe topology are determined. A transform between the facial features and the landmark nodes is computed to map the wireframe topology to reference facial image. The reference facial image and a target facial image are cropped using a bounding box. The cropped reference facial image is registered with the cropped target facial image to determine a displacement field. The displacement field is applied to the mapped wireframe topology for the reference facial image to map the target facial image to the wireframe topology.

Automated mapping of facial images to animation wireframes topologies

In a touch activated computer system, a display terminal displays an image on a screen of the terminal. The image includes one or more visual option buttons arranged in a predetermined pattern. Each button corresponds to a specific application program which can be executed by the system. A camera has a lens oriented to capture frames representing a scene in front of the screen. Each frame includes a plurality of regularized pixel values. The system includes an image registration subsystem for comparing the pixel values of successive frames. A particular application is selected for execution when the pixel values corresponding to that portion of the scene directly in front of a particular button differ in successive frames more than a predetermined threshold value.

Image-based touchscreen

In a computerized method, speech signals are analyzed using statistical trajectory modeling to produce time aligned acoustic-phonetic units. There is one acoustic-phonetic unit for each portion of the speech signal determined to be phonetically distinct. The acoustic-phonetic units are translated to corresponding time aligned image units representative of the acoustic-phonetic units. An image including the time aligned image units is displayed. The display of the time aligned image units is synchronized to a replaying of the digitized natural speech signal.

Automated speech alignment for image synthesis

A method and apparatus provide a video image of facial features synchronized with synthetic speech. Text input is transformed into a string of phonemes and timing data, which are transmitted to an image generation unit. At the same time, a string of synthetic speech samples is transmitted to an audio server. The audio server produces signals for an audio speaker, causing the audio signals to be continuously audibilized; additionally, the audio server initializes a timer. The image generation unit reads the timing data from the timer and, by consulting the phoneme and timing data, determines the position of the phoneme currently being audibilized. The image generation unit then calculates the facial configuration corresponding to the position in the string of phonemes, calculates the facial configuration, and causes the facial configuration to be displayed on a video device.

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West Newton, MA, United States of America

Keith Waters