Előadás
a BME Kognitív Tudományi Központ
házi
kollokvium sorozata keretében:
T. Kollégák,
Dr Takács Barnabás (/Digital Elite
Inc./ (www.digitalElite.net <http://www.digitalelite.net/>)
Addressing Psychological
and Cognitive Tasks Using
Virtual Faces
címmel tart előadást a BME Kognitív Tudományi Tanszékén.
Időpont:
(2005 november 7), 17.00 órai kezdettel.
Hely: BME,
Kognitív Tudományi Tanszék, Stoczek u 2, St épület III. emelet 320.
(http://www.cogsci.bme.hu/DoCS/kepek/bmemap.gif)
Mindenkit szeretettel várunk.
Az előadás kivonata:
Addressing Psychological and Cognitive Tasks Using Virtual Faces
To mimic the quality of everyday human communication and underlying
processes,
future research tools for psychology and cognitive research will need
to go
beyond photographs, Ekman faces and simple, cartoon-like drawings, by
combining
the /benefits of high visual fidelity animated digital faces /with /conversational intelligence/ and the ability to /modulate
the emotions/ of their users in a
personalized manner. Virtual human technology, computer graphics and
digital
perception have made considerable advancements during the past decades
leading
the way to create a humanoid interface that works by utilizing the
natural
means of interaction, e.g. words, gestures, glances and body language
instead
of traditional computer devices, such as the keyboard and mouse.
From
a psychological and cognitive perspective digitally animated faces
require the
ability to create believable digital humans capable of expressing the
finest
shades of emotions in a controllable manner. In addition, the same
system must
also be able to /read the users’ emotional reactions/ and adapt the
behavior of
the digital human accordingly in real-time. We implemented this concept
as a
step towards creating a novel solution called the /Virtual Human
Interface
(VHI)/. The /VHI/ builds upon many years of
interdisciplinary
research to create a /closed-loop
model of interaction/ whereas the
user’s
internal state (emotion, level of attention, etc.) is constantly
monitored and
driven directly by the animated character with the purpose of creating
emotional
bonding. This emotional bonding then acts as a catalyst to help turning
information into knowledge. In other words, our advanced user interface
draws
on emotions to help its users in the interaction process by
intelligently
tailoring its workload and constantly adapting its presentation
strategies,
hence the name /affective
intelligence/.
About the author
Barnabás Takács, Ph.D. works in the field of human modeling,
intelligent
agents, computer graphics and animation, face recognition, motion
tracking and
computer vision. He published over 50 scientific and technical papers
and
regularly lectures at universities and institutes around the world. He
has
spent many years in developing cutting-edge technologies for the film
and
entertainment industries as well as for the scientific and research
community.
/Digital Elite Inc./ (www.digitalElite.net
<http://www.digitalelite.net/>)
was founded with the purpose of bringing real-time interactive virtual
humans
to every day people. Based on its technology a variety of virtual human
applications have been developed and successfully deployed. Examples
include
digital plastic surgery (with Harvard University SPL, Boston, USA),
virtual
’Buddy’ for autistic children (Catholic University of America,
Washington D.C.,
USA), animated faces for psychiatric diagnosis and emotion research
(Harvard
University, Boston, USA, Semmelweis Medical University, Budapest),
virtual
patients for anatomical ultrasound guidance (U.S. Army Advanced
Telemedicine
Research), and virtual teachers (U.S. Dept. of Education). Dr. Takács
is
member of IEEE, ACM and the Los Angeles Chapter of SIGGRAPH.