Smile detection for user interfaces

Abstract

Perceptual User Interfaces (PUIs) aim at facilitating human-computer interaction with the aid of human-like capacities (computer vision, speech recognition, etc.). In PUIs, the human face is a central element, since it conveys not only identity but also other important information, particularly with respect to the user's mood or emotional state. This paper describes both a face detector and a smile detector for PUIs. Both are suitable for real-time interaction. The face detector provides eye, mouth and nose locations in frontal or nearly-frontal poses, whereas the smile detector is able to give a smile intensity measure. Experiments confirm that they are competitive with respect to extant detectors. These two detectors are used in an unobtrusive application that allows to interact with an Instant Messaging (IM) client. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.