Researchers decipher Star Trek faces.

Who's on the Enterprise really what to say and why Spock always looks right? Profound questions, the U.S. researchers answer: With facial recognition software analyzed old Star Trek episodes - and want to revolutionize how we see movies.

 

Helmsman Sulu usually looks upward, ship doctor McCoy thoughtfully down, navigator Chekov is almost never seen. The captain, however, is not only on the bridge, the first man in the 60-year television series Star Trek: More than 20 minutes, he is in some 45-minute sequence of the series to see the screen and dominates events. That will change until the end of the third season hardly anything, even if the skipper agile occasionally somewhat less is present in many times more do not follow ten minutes playing time given.

Such insights that we owe the U.S. company
Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition (pittpatt), with the help of special software can analyze how often each actor during a movie in the picture can be seen. The combination of face detection and face tracking has allowed researchers to follow All 67 of the first three Star Trek squadrons then analyze who, when and for how long while guckt.

This sounds initially not much, but it is. Unlike us humans, it is not easy computers, humanoid beings based on their faces to be distinguished, especially not if they are from different angles and different illumination look into the camera.

Therefore it is no wonder that, for example, Henry Schneiderman Firmenmitgründer ten years as a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in the Face Recognition Technology werkelte before he and some colleagues founded pittpatt to its accumulated expertise to silver. Now he sells software that is better and more reliable than any competing human faces to detect bad images and individuals in videos can also be identified if they are not directly look into the camera.

Who speaks to whom when

Star Trek Action is therefore nothing more than a PR coup. However, one of just the right time comes. After running in the near future, the new Star Trek movie in the cinemas, it should explain how the young James T. Kirk and Spock to the Vulcan Starfleet came to that were an inseparable team that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy from 1966 in Television embodied - and their performances by pittpatt now were analyzed.

That's nice, to show what they can, but not the ultimate goal of development. Rather, the technology used to film a new way of life to make. Instead of a film, such as current DVDs and Blu-rays, easily split by chapter, it could be using the software after pittpatt his protagonists go through.

Because the software is also broken down exactly who is in his head when the direction is inclined, it could be even analyze what most characters related. And if you missed it, what is actually in the movie or how it goes after a story verschwurbelten dissolution of the drama, can you just the way the protagonist of the film back. A research tool for movie fans.

Star Trek certainly should hardly be necessary. So complicated were the plots of the legendary TV series. Instead, the project of U.S. researchers forcefully, how far the development has advanced. While the face detection feature in Apple's iPhoto photo software occasionally still
Cookies recognize as faces, seems pittpatts program a step further to be - at least.