visual focus of attention (VFOA) recognizer

jean-marc odobez, sileye badaniel gatica-perez

idiap research instituteswitzerland

ami coi workshopmartigny, 04-05/02/08

2

what is the goal?

recognize whom or what people are looking at → visual focus of attention (FOA)

3

what for?VFOA is a strong social

interaction cue (empathy, social status, leadership, cohesiveness)

presence in remote meetings: remote participants often cannot see what’s going on

group analysis in collocated meetings: short- and long-term understanding of teams in organizations

training in organizations

4

VFOA in meetings VFOA targets

other people (A,B,C,D) slide screen (S) table (T)

how to recognize VFOA? from head location and

orientation not from eye gaze!

5

head location and orientation tracking

bounding box and arrow: head tracker head orientation

tracker head orientation

pan tilt

Pan

Tilt

6

one-person VFOA

example: person C is

looking at D

white square around person: indicates that

this person is speaking

7

multi-person VFOA

joint VFOA recognition

example: a slide has been displayed (and C is speaking)

8

dominance modeling

1? 1?

dominance related to influence & leadership affects group cohesiveness and

effectiveness

facts from social psychology high-status people receive more

visual attention people who rarely look at others

are perceived as weak VFOA and speaking activity:

dominant people exhibit high looking-while-speaking patterns

9

Q & A have you seen similar technologies before?

do you have applications for this technology today?

would this technology bring value to your end users?

thanks!