Posts

Posted on

MLNI – Presentation Homework (Wei Wang)

Dare to Dream_VODAFONE

This is a facial mapping project by Ouchhh Creative New Media Agency.  The project basically tracks the facial movement of the model and projects images onto her face.  Images were projected onto the model’s face while she is shaking her head constantly and slowly to create certain atmosphere and convey the feeling. 

Why is it interesting

I find this project interesting because the projection was perfectly mapped onto every corner of the  model’s face and her face only. Even at some point when the only side face was shown, the projection remain the feeling of three dimensional effect.  The projection also expand the space from purely a face to a whole new world. But as there is no facial expression by the model, it leads me to think what would be supplemented to this kind of real-time facial tracking project if the feeling could be strengthened by  expression.

Technology Behind

The two main part of technology adopted by this project would be facial tracking and projecting.  I would assume that a facial tracking camera was used to capture the image of this model and some AI algorithms was used to detect the face and analyzed the position of each part on the face. Once the position was determined, the images were then projected onto the corresponding part.

Posted on

Week 1: Reading Response and Research Presentation. – Samantha Cui

Reading and Video response:

In the article written by Golan Levin and the speech he gave at Ted Talk, he mentioned how the interaction and communication between human and machine are now utilizing more and more human senses. From the basic body movement, the moving of the arm and body, to using facial expression recognizing motions, and now to mouth and eyes. All of these projects contains two parts, the machine, and the human. Whatever technology or project is created, they are created to help human. Just like computer vision technique mentioned in the article, whether its facial recognization or QR scanning payment. All these inventions targets on improving the methods we use now to make it more convenient. 

Research Project:  Presentation Link

The project I was interested while researching is the Visual lens technique. Several companies are using this technique now and it has helped a lot of people. The one I’ll be focusing on illustrating is the Pinterest Lens.

Pinterest Lens is a function designed to help people search for items using visual recognization. Instead of typing in words and searching what they want to find, now people could just take a picture and thousands of related results would appear. It’s much more convenient.

Posted on

MLNI Week 1: Zero UI research – Alex Wang

Reading reflection:

Computer vision is a game changing technology that have already entered our daily lives, applications being the scanning of QR codes or the recognition of car number plates replaces physical labour of humans at a parking lot. Just recently our campus and dorms also started the usage of facial recognition as an alternative to scanning student ID cards. Aside from these practical impacts on our daily lives, computer vision also has many applications to the creation of art. Having the power to recognize objects, it gives the computer power to perform specific operations using its understanding of the images, as opposed to traditional image manipulations where the computer only reads in pixel values but not understand what is being processed. I think the most obvious example would be applications that manipulates the human face, after recognizing that it is the face of a human, while leaving the rest of the image alone.

Zero UI project research:

After some research on the recent developments of Zero UI projects, I came across a project by googles advanced technology and projects team which they named project Soli . Project Soli is a chip that uses miniature radars to sense hand gestures and is exactly what I would consider the future of zero UI. Users can now control their devices without physical contact with their devices, and have all their control gestures be natural, as if controlling a physical device.

Technology:

I believe that the chip collects radar information of hand movements, then uses software to make interpretations of what the gesture means, I believe this could definitely benefit from computer vision/machine learning since the interpretation component of this technology requires the computer to predict what gesture the user is trying to input.

Current application:

Project Soli started around 2014. But just recently, Google is planning on releasing their newest phone model called “Google Pixel 4“. This phone is one of the most anticipated phone of 2019, as it planned to incorporate the Soli chip into the phone. There are many leaks and rumors online, building up a lot of tension before the release of the phone, which is expected to be in September/October 2019 which is really just around the corner.

Connection to Zero UI and potential future applications:

I think this technology could be very interesting and useful as it provides a very natural way to interact with machines, just like the ideas of zero UI. It could also be used in creative ways such as new control for gaming, or new tools for art creation. Just the new way of interaction opens up doors for endless possibilities on the application of this new interaction technique.

Videos:

Sources:

https://atap.google.com/soli/

https://www.techradar.com/news/google-pixel-4

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-4-motion-sense-gestures-leak/

Posted on

RECITATION 1 : ELECTRONICS & SOLDERING – Elysia

BUILDING ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS AND SOLDERING

During the recitation, we were told to pair up and build three separate circuits. Before we start, we gathered the necessary component; A breadbox to put our component and test our circuit designs, a voltage regulator to maintain the constant voltage level, a resistor to limit the current flowing to other components, a capacitor that stores electrical charge, a variable resistor or potentiometer that works as a voltage divider, a Light-emitting Diode (LED) and a speaker that signifies the output of the current in the circuit, a button switch to connect and disconnect the circuit, a handful of wires, and a 12 volt power supply.

The first circuit was the Doorbell, we managed to follow the instructions albeit with some difficulties figuring out the vertical and horizontal flow of the breadbox. After a few tries, the circuit worked and the speaker gave a faint sound.

doorbell

Doorbell Circuit

Next is the soldering workshop, we connected an arcade button to two separate wires so that it could be used in the next circuits.

When we made the Lamp circuit, we tried out both the push button and the arcade button. The result was that the arcade button works significantly better. We later found out it was because we put the push button orientation wrong, there are certain legs that should be wired together. This is also why our speaker in the first circuit only gave out a faint sound, unlike other speakers.

Lamp

Lamp Circuit

The last circuit was the dimmable lamp, it was quite similar to the previous circuit. The only difference was the use of the potentiometer. At first, the lamp didn’t light up, it turns out we didn’t put the wires in the correct order for the potentiometer, because there are input and output ports. Even though the circuit works, due to the limited time, we weren’t able to try the dimmer.

circuit3: dimmable lamp

Dimmable Lamp Circuit

In conclusion, we learned a lot about how circuits work and the many ways to interpret interactivity that range from small circuits to more advanced forms such as big art projects.

READING

The Art of Interactive Design was quite an interesting read as I have never considered what interactivity genuinely means. The passage stated that anything can be interactive, the degree just varies. In regard to the circuits that we made during recitation, I believe that it involves a substantial form of interactivity. We interact to the circuit by putting the components in certain order and it responds by giving us the outcome, both good (the circuit works) or bad (the circuit didn’t work or short circuit).  

Furthermore, I believe that the utilization of Interaction Design and Physical Computing in an era where everything is evolving rapidly will certainly benefit the artist in exploring areas that never previously considered. As quoted from the reading, “Interactivity is the core idea of computing”, this allows the artist to examine and focus on how people interact with the product, both physically and emotionally. Thus, creating art that would connect more with the people who sees it.

Posted on

Assignment 01 Crystal

Google translation with computer vision

Background 

When you are in a foreign country, the most difficult problem must be the language, especially for daily dialogue. Therefore we need translation tools to help us communicate with others.

The traditional way of translating is to type the content of what you want to translate into the translation software. On pressing the button, you will get the expected answer. But this traditional approach takes time and delays because you need to spend several minutes typing things so it is not suitable for everyday communication. But if you could translate the words you saw, what you said, or even what you want to say in your mind immediately and directly. It would be a lot more convenient.

And these are all implemented step by step through artificial intelligence technology. One of its progressed functions  is to use a camera to capture text, and the software can recognize the text in the image. The user can select the part on the screen and translate it in one click. The other is instant translation, which only needs to point the camera at the text to translate it on the original dynamic image.

Progression 

So far, since the application of computer vision has enhanced the ability of computers to understand and recognize images, Google’s photo translation function has been further improved. It is no longer limited to text translation, but extends to the content of the image itself. The content of the picture can be automatically described or summarized in the target language, including the wearing and expression of the character. 

Comprehension 

How to achieve this effect? By watching the video about computer vision, my comprehension of the process is as follows. The program analyzes the image layer by layer, and each layer has a different focus. The difference in image brightness can be used to derive the outline of the object. Finally, the results of the analysis of the layers are combined to give the most probable results. Of course, the basis of all analysis must be a huge database. Without a large set of data, there is no basis and support for analysis.

Significance

According to the related materials, the goal of computer vision is to enhance the computer’s ability of recognizing and understanding images until it is infinitely close to the human visual system. The case of google translation shows that the goal is practical and the improvement and application of computer vision will considerably make multi-language communication more convenient. 

Link of my presentation: