Saturday 28 April 2012

Week 6/7

Design



Since my previous post there have been no current changes to the design of the main system. There has been one main change and that is instead of using openGL libraries such as Glut or FreeGlut, me and my associate student have concluded that it would be better to keep it as a directX program since our platform for this thesis  will just be Windows.

Coding

The main part of these 2 weeks has been coding.

The first part was coding the kinect interface properly to receive data from the kinect. However this proved more challenging than originally expected and with the help of William and Hamed (a PhD Student/Researcher at the university), i have more understanding on how it works.

The second part of the coding is for the face detector. This is where my research of these 2 weeks comes in (written below).

The coding for this thesis has been more challenging than originally expected.

Research

During these past 2 weeks my main bulk of research was to look into the face detectors. Since there are more than one algorithms that could be used i narrowed them down to 2 main ones:

  1. HAAR Object Detection - this is a library in OpenCV that has a face detection algorithm built into it
  2. AAM Tracking - This is an external library that has been built to integrate into OpenCV.
My research into this has shown me that AAM tracking is more refined and is able to detect the face with a better accuracy than HAAR. I have not completed all my research into this, and when i have a blog post will be done on just this.


Current Implementation

Currently im in the process of implementing the HAAR detection because it comes ready with OpenCV. If my research shows me that AAM is a better algorithm in all aspects, steps will be taken to integrate AAM Tracking.

Friday 13 April 2012

Week 5

For convenience all blog updates will be done on a weekly basis on the friday's of each week. Each blog update will be split up into 3 sections. Design, where i update on any design changes that may have occurred during the week. Coding, where i update on any code that has been done or is in progress over the week. And literature, where i add updates on any papers that i have read and deem have been useful in this specific context.

Design

As of the meeting that was held on the 4th of April 2012 these are what my designs were

Data Flow Diagram




HIPO Diagram

UI



The design has not been modified since said meeting.


Coding

During my constant communication with my colleague William Qi (http://anonskypewilliam.blogspot.com.au/?view=classic), we have come to the conclusion of using the Kinect SDK with OpenCV to be our coding base with the Kinect for such things as collecting data, face tracking etc.

We have also concluded that as a base for our thesis we would like to have 2D Deformation done, due to the fact that 3D Deformation could be quite CPU and Graphically intensive and possibly unviable until further research is done.

My current coding is in progress and it involves converting the input code from DirectX to OpenGL (OpenCV) in the Skeletal Viewer that is included in the Kinect SDK.

 Current Literature


All the current Literature that i have read and analysed include

  1. Automatic reconstruction of personalized avatars from 3D face scans by Michael Zollhofer, Michael Martinek, Gunther Greiner, Marc Stamminger and Jochen Sußmuth
  2. Realtime performance-based facial animation by Thibaut Weise, Sofien Bouaziz, Hao Li and Mark Pauly
  3. Computer-Based Analysis of Facial Action in Schizophrenic and Depressed Patients by Frank Schneider, Hans Heimann, Waldemar Himer, Dietmar Huss, Regina Mattes, and Birgitta Adam
Am also currently reading several papers that include information about 3D expression accuracy  and kinect facial recognition algorithms.