See it for yourself

It's all well and good reading about the concepts behind facial recognition and what interesting possibilities arise from its utilisation, but what about actually being able to see some of this in action? Below are some videos demonstrating what has been discussed within the articles on faces.

iCat chess buddy

Here we can see the iCat robot (discussed within the 'your future check mate' article) which is teaching a range of different people how to play chess. It makes use of emotion recognition in order to understand what the other player is feeling. So for example it may recognise that they are feeling perplexed by detecting a furrowed brow and once it understands this it may give the player a tip on what to do next or reinforce them in order for the player to feel motivated to learn.

EMYS robot that displays expressions

This is a video demonstrating some of the expressions that can be conveyed by the EMYS robot discussed within the 'how to get a head in robotics' article. As you could imagine, use of an expression understanding system coupled with a robot which could also convey its own complex facial expressions is the next step in allowing in-depth interaction between humans and machines. This robot interaction is the focus of a research group named LIREC (LIving with Robots and intEractive Companions).

If the robotics side of facial perception interests you then it would be wise to visit the LIREC website as it contains material on the various areas of research they go into in order to 'design our future robot companions'.

For more information about the research behind facial perception in general visit: http://www.face-rec.org/. This website also has a list of all the active research groups involved.