TMH gets Jury award at IVA Gala 2021

Introducing the Furhat FaceCore AnimationSystem

Johan Ehrenfors¹, Charlie Caper¹, Nils Hagberg¹, Jonas Beskow^1,2

^{Furhat is a social robot that uses facial projection technology to achieve a high degree of
expressivity and flexibility. In this video demonstration, we will present new features that take
this facial expressiveness further. We introduce FaceCore, a new face engine for the robot,
which improves the visual fidelity of the face and the eyes, and also adds increased flexibility
when it comes to designing new robotic characters as well as modifying existing ones: the
shape and texture of the face may be controlled independently - facial shape can be modified
through a set of parameters that include size and positioning of facial features e.g. eye size, eye
tilt, nose width, mouth height etc. and facial textures can be modified in a flexible way through a
set of overlays. Most importantly, we will present a new toolset and a workflow for quickly and
accurately creating highly expressive robot performances, by allowing users to record their own
face motion using an iPhone with built-in sensors for face tracking. These recordings can then,
after optional tweaking or filtering, be incorporated into custom robot applications in the form of
gestures, prompts or entire canned performances.
Video download link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15S0UAakqBMfI8Nc3xfwDC4O3KPJk6r1V/view}