APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING FACIAL EXPRESSION OF VIRTUAL HUMAN USING HETEROGENEOUS DATA AND METHOD THEREOF

• US 20120148161A1
• Filed: 08/19/2011
• Published: 06/14/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: KIM, Jae Hwan
• Application Number:
  US13/213,807
• Publication Number:
  US 20120148161A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/195
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 13/40 of characters, e.g. humans, animals or virtual beings

Abstract

Disclosed are an apparatus for controlling facial expression of a virtual human using heterogeneous information and a method using the same. The apparatus for controlling expression of a virtual human using heterogeneous information includes: an extraction module extracting feature data from input image data and sentence or voice data; a DB construction module classifying the extracted feature data into a set of emotional expressions and a emotional expression category by using a set of pre-constructed index data on heterogeneous data; a recognition module transferring the classified emotional expression category; and a viewing module viewing the images and the sentence or voice of the virtual human according to the emotional expression category. By this configuration, the exemplary embodiment of the present invention can delicately express emotion of a virtual human and increase recognition for emotional classification accordingly.

Claims

1. An apparatus for controlling facial expression of a virtual human using heterogeneous information, comprising:

an extraction module extracting feature data from input image data and sentence or voice data;

a DB construction module classifying the extracted feature data into a set of emotional expressions and a emotional expression category by using a set of pre-constructed index data on heterogeneous data;

a recognition module transferring the classified emotional expression category; and

a viewing module viewing the images and the sentence or voice of the virtual human according to the emotional expression category.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the DB construction module measures a distance between the extracted feature data and data in the DB construction module referenced for recognition and when the proximity structure is maintained according to the distance measurement results, classifies the feature data into the set of emotional expression or the emotional expression category by using the set of the pre-constructed index data.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the DB construction module measures a distance by using a commute-time metric function.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the DB construction module constructs the set of index data by performing co-clustering or bipartite graph partitioning on the sets of pre-defined feature images and feature words.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the DB construction module groups the sets of predefined feature images and feature words having a similar nature into a single group by using the co-clustering or the bipartite graph partitioning to construct the set of index data.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the DB construction module generates the feature data for images from words based on the emotional expression category and generates the feature data for words from images.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the viewing module performs expression wrapping for naturally synthesizing images and does not perform the wraphing on the entire images but performs the expression wraphing using local wraphing.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the viewing module includes a self-evaluation module that receives the active reaction of the user for the emotional expression of the virtual human and feedbacks the input reaction information to the DB construction module.

9. A method for controlling facial expression of a virtual human using heterogeneous information, comprising:

(a) extracting feature data from input image data and sentence or voice data;

(b) classifying the extracted feature data into a set of emotional expressions and a emotional expression category by using a set of pre-constructed index data on heterogeneous data; and

(c) viewing images and sentence or voice of the virtual human according to the classified emotional expression category.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the classifying measures a distance between the extracted feature data and data in the DB construction module referenced for recognition and when the proximity structure is maintained according to the distance measurement results, classifies the feature data into the set of emotional expression or the emotional expression category by using the set of the pre-constructed index data.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the classifying measures a distance by using a commute-time metric function.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the classifying constructs the set of index data by performing co-clustering or bipartite graph partitioning on the sets of pre-defined feature images and feature words.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the classifying groups the sets of predefined feature images and feature words having a similar nature into a single group by using the co-clustering or the bipartite graph partitioning to construct the set of index data.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the classifying generates the feature data for images from words based on the emotional expression category and generates the feature data for words from images.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein the viewing performs expression wraphing for naturally synthesizing images and does not perform the wraphing on the entire images but performs the expression wraphing using local wraphing.