A real time system for model-based interpretation of the dynamics of facial expressions

Our system runs at 10 fps on a 2.0 GHz processor and an image resolution of 640times480 pixels. High quality objective functions that are learned from annotated example images ensure both an accurate and fast computation of the model parameters. Our demonstrator for facial expression estimation has been presented at several events with political audience and on TV. However, the approach of robust face models fitting, forms the basis of various more applications such as gaze detection or gender estimation. The drawback of our approach is that the data base from which the objective function is learned needs to cover all aspects of face properties. If, for instance, the database did not contain images of bearded men the objective function will fail when confronted with such an image. Furthermore, the data base has to be manually annotated. Although no expert knowledge is required, this task requires a considerable amount of time. An online fitting demonstration is available.