Recognizing a face is harder than it sounds. Using Active Appearance Modeling (one of the common methods in use today), a computer has to compare a face it sees to an "average face" it has previously learned. It works pretty well when the subject smiles and stares right into the computer's camera, but in real life, lighting, facial expression and "3D pose variation" present serious obstacles.

The Robotics Institute team is working on that last bit. Whenever you turn your head, part of your face is occluded. Without the right features to make its comparison, the computer can't recognize you. New algorithms and programming methods allow for the creation of 3D face meshes that can be adjusted on the fly to fit the subject's face, even if she turns partly away from the camera.

Of course, the government will use this technology to track our every move long before we have friendly helper robots who know us on sight, but it's nice to know we live in a world where something called the Robotics Institute actually exists. Image by: Robotics Institute.

AAM Fitting Algorithms. [Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute]

The folks at Andrew Maynard Architects explain their project, with tongues planted mostly in cheek:

The age of the outer-suburb is soon to come to an end. Many analysts believe that Peak-Oil will be reached soon after 2011. When we hit Peak-Oil we will not only have no petrol to run cars, furthermore we will no longer have many of the goods we need and there will be huge food shortages as food production and distribution relies heavily on oil based fertilisers which drastically increase yields.

With no cars people will no longer be able to reach the suburbs and hence metropolitan populations will swell as suburban refugees are forced to wander into the cities . . . The suburbs will decay . . . At Andrew Maynard Architects, we have decided to give mother-nature a hand. We have begun designing the first suburb eating robot and we hope to go into production in early 2019. We have called our robot the CV08. In short, CV08 consumes the abandoned suburbs through its front 2 legs. It processes the materials and fires off compacted recycling missiles to awaiting recycling plants. CV08's middle legs and one rear leg follow the front legs to terra-form the newly revealed earth with native Flora and Fauna. Vast stocks of the Flora and Fauna are stored within CV08 in carbonite sleep until they are required to colonise what was previously suburban wasteland.

Over 50% of Australians are currently over-weight due to complete car dependence, a sedentary lifestyle and over eating. With this in mind the 6th leg has been designed to pick up, and apply liposuction to over-weight Australians that have been to slow and unfit to migrate into the denser areas with the rest of the population. As there is no longer a steady stream of oil, CV08 fuels itself with the vast quantities of excess human fat that it finds on its journey through the suburbs.

Something about this video made me think of nice black metal, perhaps from Sweden. I'm not sure why. So I made a little snippet with a new soundtrack.

New Video of BDI's Robot [IEEE Automaton]