Realistic speech animation of synthetic faces

Ankara : Department of Computer Engineering and Information Science and the Institute of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 1998.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1998.Includes bibliographical references leaves 79-81.Uz, BarışM.S

Motion Generation during Vocalized Emotional Expressions and Evaluation in Android Robots

Vocalized emotional expressions such as laughter and surprise often occur in natural dialogue interactions and are important factors to be considered in order to achieve smooth robot-mediated communication. Miscommunication may be caused if there is a mismatch between audio and visual modalities, especially in android robots, which have a highly humanlike appearance. In this chapter, motion generation methods are introduced for laughter and vocalized surprise events, based on analysis results of human behaviors during dialogue interactions. The effectiveness of controlling different modalities of the face, head, and upper body (eyebrow raising, eyelid widening/narrowing, lip corner/cheek raising, eye blinking, head motion, and torso motion control) and different motion control levels are evaluated using an android robot. Subjective experiments indicate the importance of each modality in the perception of motion naturalness (humanlikeness) and the degree of emotional expression

Computer facial animation based on biomechanical modeling

Orientadores: Leo Pini Magalhães, Jose Mario De MartinoDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: A crescente busca pelo realismo em personagens virtuais encontrados em diversas aplicações na indústria do cinema, no ensino, jogos, entre outras, é a motivação do presente trabalho. O trabalho descreve um modelo de animação que emprega a estratégia biomecânica para o desenvolvimento de um protótipo computacional, chamado SABiom. A técnica utilizada baseia-se na simulação de características físicas da face humana, tais como as camadas de pele e músculos, que são modeladas de forma a permitir a simulação do comportamento mecânico do tecido facial sob a ação de forças musculares. Embora existam vários movimentos produzidos por uma face, o presente trabalho restringiu-se às simulações dos movimentos de expressões faciais focalizando os lábios. Para validar os resultados obtidos com o SABiom, comparou-se as imagens do modelo virtual obtidas através do protótipo desenvolvido com imagens obtidas de um modelo humanoAbstract: The increasing search for realism in virtual characters found in' many applications as movies, education, games, so on, is the motivation ofthis thesis. The thesis describes an animation model that employs the biomechanics strategy for the development of a computing prototype, called SABiom. The method used is based on simulation of physical features of the human face, such as layers of the skin and musc1es, that are modeled for simulation of the mechanical behavior of the facial tissue under the action of muscle forces. Although there are several movements produced by a face, the current work limits itself to the simulations of the facial expressions focusing the lips. To validate the results obtained from SABiom, we compared the images of the virtual model with images from a human modelMestradoEngenharia de ComputaçãoMestre em Engenharia Elétric

A physically-based muscle and skin model for facial animation

Facial animation is a popular area of research which has been around for over thirty years, but even with this long time scale, automatically creating realistic facial expressions is still an unsolved goal. This work furthers the state of the art in computer facial animation by introducing a new muscle and skin model and a method of easily transferring a full muscle and bone animation setup from one head mesh to another with very little user input. The developed muscle model allows muscles of any shape to be accurately simulated, preserving volume during contraction and interacting with surrounding muscles and skin in a lifelike manner. The muscles can drive a rigid body model of a jaw, giving realistic physically-based movement to all areas of the face. The skin model has multiple layers, mimicking the natural structure of skin and it connects onto the muscle model and is deformed realistically by the movements of the muscles and underlying bones. The skin smoothly transfers underlying movements into skin surface movements and propagates forces smoothly across the face. Once a head model has been set up with muscles and bones, moving this muscle and bone set to another head is a simple matter using the developed techniques. The developed software employs principles from forensic reconstruction, using specific landmarks on the head to map the bone and muscles to the new head model and once the muscles and skull have been quickly transferred, they provide animation capabilities on the new mesh within minutes

Becoming Human with Humanoid

Nowadays, our expectations of robots have been significantly increases. The robot, which was initially only doing simple jobs, is now expected to be smarter and more dynamic. People want a robot that resembles a human (humanoid) has and has emotional intelligence that can perform action-reaction interactions. This book consists of two sections. The first section focuses on emotional intelligence, while the second section discusses the control of robotics. The contents of the book reveal the outcomes of research conducted by scholars in robotics fields to accommodate needs of society and industry