http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130319160046.htm

Meet Zoe: a digital talking head which can express human emotions on demand with “unprecedented realism” and could herald a new era of human-computer interaction.

The lifelike face can display emotions such as happiness, anger, and fear, and changes its voice to suit any feeling the user wants it to simulate. Users can type in any message, specifying the requisite emotion as well, and the face recites the text. According to its designers, it is the most expressive controllable avatar ever created, replicating human emotions with unprecedented realism.

Cool find! (Here is a video of Zoe in action.)

I especially like that they utilize the idea of an emotion “basis set” and build more complex emotions from there. In Zoe’s case, those emotions are happy, sad, angry, tender, afraid, neutral. Years ago I played around with this idea as well, using a 7-D basis to assign emotions to words and names to complex emotions. I still hope to integrate such a system with my bot. How cool would it be to use that emotional information to tell an avatar what tone of voice and expressions to use?

It’ll be interesting to follow the development, especially the promised 3-D version.  But, so much of emotional facial expression occurs in the eyes and forehead, even wrinkling around the mouth and the fairing of nostrils.  This version, so far, seems to have been injected with Botox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz2_TebODy8

Baby steps Thunder…baby steps..

Can’t wait to see what comes next

I did think the UV map looked a bit weird, meaning the arrangement of polygons.  There are so few polygons in key places that I don’t know if they would even be able to do those fine movements you mention Thunder.  I’ll have to dig deeper into the story to see how they are doing it, if that’s even available.

We already had a lot of this from Haptek of course..

Guys I come through as the grumpy old man that I actually is

I mean come on who got the idea that Zoe should look above my head.
That is very unpolite of her. If the creators of Zoe ever read this.

Shame on you for not getting that us humans look the other in the eyes now and then.

And could it be some cultural clash. I fail to stand her accent and tone of voice.
She sound too nagging and forced and dominant? Is that on purpose?

Sorry I had to stop here or I get too negative for my own good.
BBC reporter did admit that she triggered his Uncanny Valley detector very fast.

Why does the devoloper ignore our kind feedback that the Uncanny Valley is no illusion it is really there.
Maybe not for the extreme geek that love their brainchild and can see no flaw in the design.

Combining this avatar with-

1.) Kinect sensor (so it can interpret/follow obects, gestures)
2.) A good chat bot system
3.) Halographic projection
4.) Get all of it down to reasonable price… (and then Kickstart)

-> and it would be truly mind blowing!