Zico
12th September 2007, 00:37
Jeremiah is a virtual reality face who's eyes/face follow you and interacts with what he sees by displaying emotions. If you have 2 networked pc's and video camera... possibly even a webcam??, have a play with the free download at the bottom of this page..
http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Pers.../jeremiah.html
"The system is perfectly capable of running on a single PC but for speed of operation each subsystem runs on a dedicated PC connected via a network, built into a flight case for portability.
Jeremiah’s head is based upon the GeoFace (DECface) articulated bone model with prescripted expressions for key emotions. Linear Interpolation provides transitions between these expressions. He contains a simple Newtonian model of motion with random elements of movement, random blinking and ambient motion.
The vision system is based around a per pixel Gaussian Mixture model of colour distributions using expectation maximisation within the background segmentation framework proposed by Grimson et al with additional shadow suppression and noise removal algorithms. This allows static background scenes to be learnt dynamically, providing a robust segmentation of foreground objects. The system was developed, and is used for visual surveillance (Link to appear, see publications). Jeremiahs attention is randomly distributed between these objects weighted by their size and motion. Co-ordinates of objects within the field of view are sent to the head model for animation.
The emotion engine probabilistically determines the current state of emotions from simple parameters extracted from objects of interest within the visual field. This simple set of rules allows chaotic behaviour in a similar fashion to flocking simulations where a simple set of rules in a complex environment can produce what appears to be emergent behaviour. Jeremiah likes visual stimulus - high rates of movement make him happy. Jeremiah likes company - no stimulus makes him sad. Jeremiah doesn’t like surprise - high rates of change in the size of objects make him surprised. Jeremiah doesn’t like to be ignored - if objects exist but don’t move then he assumes they are ignoring him and hence gets angry. Too much of a good thing spoils the experience - if Jeremiah experiences too much of any particular stimulus he will get bored with it and reduce its influence on himself."
System Requirements
The system is designed to run on 2 separate machines termed “head” and “eyes”. The machine
designated “head” generates the graphics for either Jeremiah, Saul or a virtual world while the machine
designated “eyes” handles the computer vision elements. A similar specification machine can be used
for both machines however it is important that the machine designated “head” should have a hardware
accelerated graphics card and the machine designated “eyes” include a suitable Video for Windows
acquisition card. A network connection between the 2 machines allows the computer vision and
graphics components to communicate. This network connection should be operating at 100MB/s.
Integration into an existing 100MB/s network is possible. However, as the system can use UDP network
broadcast protocols, it is recommended that the network is isolated using a simple UTP crossover cable
or small hub to connect the machines. Although the system can run on a single machine, the image
processing places considerable demands upon processing power and the video for windows version of
the software will periodically stall when ran on the same machine as the graphics. This is a known issue
and there are no immediate plans to rectify it. For this reason it is recommended that all other programs
are closed when Jeremiah is in operation.
Recommended Machine Specification:
HEAD:
P4 or Athlon 1GHz or greater (PIII 500MHz minimum)
Memory, >256MB
Windows 2000. (Software should run under Windows XP but not all components have been tested)
Hard Drive large enough to hold OS. (>1GB)
Hardware accelerated AGP graphics card supporting OpenGl, (GeForce2 or above recommended)
10/100 network card.
EYES:
P4 or Athlon 1GHz or greater (PIII 500MHz minimum)
Memory, >256MB
Windows 2000. (Software should run under Windows XP but not all components have been tested)
Hard Drive large enough to hold OS. (>1GB)
10/100 network card.
WinTV card with composite/S-Video input (should work with other Video for Window devices but all
components have not been tested)
Other :
Network cross over cable
PAL/NTSC (Composite) Video camera with variable FOV and AGC/White Balance control
Follow the PDF instructions closely and let me know if you get it to work.. gonna try and set this up as a screensaver if I can.. should get a reaction from my 7 year old son when he sees it.. :D
http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Pers.../jeremiah.html
"The system is perfectly capable of running on a single PC but for speed of operation each subsystem runs on a dedicated PC connected via a network, built into a flight case for portability.
Jeremiah’s head is based upon the GeoFace (DECface) articulated bone model with prescripted expressions for key emotions. Linear Interpolation provides transitions between these expressions. He contains a simple Newtonian model of motion with random elements of movement, random blinking and ambient motion.
The vision system is based around a per pixel Gaussian Mixture model of colour distributions using expectation maximisation within the background segmentation framework proposed by Grimson et al with additional shadow suppression and noise removal algorithms. This allows static background scenes to be learnt dynamically, providing a robust segmentation of foreground objects. The system was developed, and is used for visual surveillance (Link to appear, see publications). Jeremiahs attention is randomly distributed between these objects weighted by their size and motion. Co-ordinates of objects within the field of view are sent to the head model for animation.
The emotion engine probabilistically determines the current state of emotions from simple parameters extracted from objects of interest within the visual field. This simple set of rules allows chaotic behaviour in a similar fashion to flocking simulations where a simple set of rules in a complex environment can produce what appears to be emergent behaviour. Jeremiah likes visual stimulus - high rates of movement make him happy. Jeremiah likes company - no stimulus makes him sad. Jeremiah doesn’t like surprise - high rates of change in the size of objects make him surprised. Jeremiah doesn’t like to be ignored - if objects exist but don’t move then he assumes they are ignoring him and hence gets angry. Too much of a good thing spoils the experience - if Jeremiah experiences too much of any particular stimulus he will get bored with it and reduce its influence on himself."
System Requirements
The system is designed to run on 2 separate machines termed “head” and “eyes”. The machine
designated “head” generates the graphics for either Jeremiah, Saul or a virtual world while the machine
designated “eyes” handles the computer vision elements. A similar specification machine can be used
for both machines however it is important that the machine designated “head” should have a hardware
accelerated graphics card and the machine designated “eyes” include a suitable Video for Windows
acquisition card. A network connection between the 2 machines allows the computer vision and
graphics components to communicate. This network connection should be operating at 100MB/s.
Integration into an existing 100MB/s network is possible. However, as the system can use UDP network
broadcast protocols, it is recommended that the network is isolated using a simple UTP crossover cable
or small hub to connect the machines. Although the system can run on a single machine, the image
processing places considerable demands upon processing power and the video for windows version of
the software will periodically stall when ran on the same machine as the graphics. This is a known issue
and there are no immediate plans to rectify it. For this reason it is recommended that all other programs
are closed when Jeremiah is in operation.
Recommended Machine Specification:
HEAD:
P4 or Athlon 1GHz or greater (PIII 500MHz minimum)
Memory, >256MB
Windows 2000. (Software should run under Windows XP but not all components have been tested)
Hard Drive large enough to hold OS. (>1GB)
Hardware accelerated AGP graphics card supporting OpenGl, (GeForce2 or above recommended)
10/100 network card.
EYES:
P4 or Athlon 1GHz or greater (PIII 500MHz minimum)
Memory, >256MB
Windows 2000. (Software should run under Windows XP but not all components have been tested)
Hard Drive large enough to hold OS. (>1GB)
10/100 network card.
WinTV card with composite/S-Video input (should work with other Video for Window devices but all
components have not been tested)
Other :
Network cross over cable
PAL/NTSC (Composite) Video camera with variable FOV and AGC/White Balance control
Follow the PDF instructions closely and let me know if you get it to work.. gonna try and set this up as a screensaver if I can.. should get a reaction from my 7 year old son when he sees it.. :D