II. OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP
Paul Ekman
II-A. Organization of the Workshop
A Workshop on Facial Understanding was held in response to a request from NSF to determine the research problems in the area of how to extract information from the face using new developments in such areas as computer science, neural networks, and image processing. The organizing committee consisted of Paul Ekman, University of California at San Francisco, a psychologist who has done extensive work on facial expression; Tom Huang, University of Illinois, an electrical engineer who has worked extensively in computer vision; and Terry Sejnowski, University of California at San Diego and Salk Institute, a neuroscientist who has applied neural networks to a variety of problems in visual pattern recognition. The scope and organization of the Workshop were decided by this organizing committee.
II-B. Scope of the Workshop
It was necessary to bring the diverse participants up to date on relevant developments, in fields other than their own, that are relevant to the focus of the Workshop. Tutorial plenary sessions addressed: (a) Psychology and neuroanatomy of facial expression; (b) Computer vision, motion processing and lip reading; (c) Neural networks; (d) Finding, organizing and interpreting faces; and (e) Hardware considerations.
Breakout work groups dealt with three general themes: (a) Basic science (what about the face is represented; what type of information from facial behavior is abstracted and quantified); (b) Sensing and processing (the preliminary analysis transformations, recording methods, sensors, preprocessing, motion analysis); and (c) Modeling and data structure (organization of a facial database; access methods, type of information stored; representation or display of visual facial information; how to use information in the data base; modeling, recreation of faces, effecter systems, robotics).
Each breakout work group identified the important research issues and the infrastructure that is needed to facilitate research.
II-C. Goals achieved
The Workshop:
- identified the most important areas of research on how to extract information from facial activity relevant to a person's emotional, cognitive and physical state.
- considered computer vision techniques for facial processing and categorization of facial expressions relevant to enhancing communication between man and machine.
- considered how we can facilitate the training of new investigators in the relevant fields; including what curricula is needed in the education of new investigators, and what tools, communication media, support structures, etc. are needed to support basic research over the next several years.
II-D. Workshop Schedule
The Workshop was held in Washington D.C. July 30-August 1st. The main sections of the Workshop are listed below.
Day 1:
Participants gave five minute summaries of their own work
Tutorial Session 1: Psychology and Neuroanatomy of Facial Expression
Tutorial Session 2: Computer Vision, Motion Processing and Lip reading.
Tutorial Session 3: Neural Networks
Tutorial Session 4: Finding, organizing and interpreting faces.
Day 2:
Tutorial Session 5: Hardware Considerations
Breakout Workgroup Meetings
Reports by Breakout groups
Day 3:
Breakout group meetings to develop recommendations
Report from Breakout groups
II-E. Participants
The selection of participants was based on (a) the concerns of the organizing committee to represent different areas of expertise within the broad areas relevant to the Workshop; (b) recommendations from NSF; (c) the desire to have representatives from universities, government research labs, and industry research labs. To facilitate discussion we decided to limit invitations to under 30.
Name |
Position |
Institution |
Y. T. Chien |
Division Director Division of Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) |
National Science Foundation |
Howard Moraff |
Program Director Robotics and Machine Intelligence Program |
National Science Foundation |
Su-Shing Chen |
Program Director Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems Program |
National Science Foundation |
John Hestenes |
Program Director Interactive Systems Program |
National Science Foundation |
Richard Louttit |
Acting Division Director Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Science |
National Science Foundation |
Jean Intermaggio |
Program Director Social Psychology Program |
National Science Foundation |
Rodney Cocking |
Chief, Cognition, Learning and Memory |
National Institute of Mental Health |
Lynn Huffman |
Chief, Personality & Emotion Program |
National Institute of Mental Health |
Richard Nakamura |
Chief, Cognition & Behavioral Neuroscience |
National Institute of Mental Health |
Wil Irwin |
Human Interaction Lab |
UC San Francisco |
Ron Cole |
Center for Spoken Language Understanding |
Oregon Graduate Institute |
Beatrice Golomb |
University of California Medical School |
UCLA |
Name |
Unit |
Institution |
City/State/Country |
|
John Allman |
Division of Biology 216-76 |
California Institute of Technology |
Pasadena, CA 91125 |
|
Dana Ballard |
Department of Computer Science |
University of Rochester |
Rochester, NY 14627 |
|
Gordon Baylis |
Department of Psychology |
University of California, San Diego |
La Jolla, CA 92093 |
|
Peter Burt |
CN 5300 |
Sarnoff Research Center |
Princeton, NJ 08543 |
|
John T. Cacioppo |
Dept. of Psychology |
Ohio State University |
Columbus, OH 43210-1222 |
|
Gary Cottrell |
Department of Computer Science and Engineering |
University of California, San Diego |
La Jolla, CA 92093 |
|
Richard J. Davidson |
Psychophysiology Laboratory |
University of Wisconsin |
Madison, WI 53706 |
|
Paul Ekman |
Human Interaction Lab |
University of California |
San Francisco, CA 94143 |
|
Wallace V. Friesen |
234 Hillsboro |
Lexington, KY 40511 |
||
Oscar Garcia |
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science |
The George Washington University |
Washington DC 20052 |
|
Joseph C. Hager |
Human Interaction Lab |
University of California |
San Francisco, CA 94143 |
|
Thomas S. Huang |
Coordinated Science Laboratory |
University of Illinois |
Urbana, IL 61801 |
|
Carroll Izard |
Dept. of Psychology |
University of Delaware |
Newark, DE 19716 |
|
Hsien-Che Lee |
Imaging Research Labs |
Eastman Kodak Company |
Rochester NY 14650-1816 |
|
Kenji Mase |
NIT R&D Information & Patent Center |
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation |
1-1-7, Uchisaiwai-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100 JAPAN |
|
Fred Parke |
PS/LOB Technology, 9462 |
IBM |
Austin, TX 78758 |
|
Alexander Pentland |
Rm E-15-187 The Media Lab |
MIT |
Cambridge, MA 02139 |
|
Michael Phillips |
MIT Computer Science Lab |
MIT/TD> |
Cambridge MA 02139 |
|
Demetri Psaltis |
Department of Electrical Engineering |
California Institute of Technology |
Pasadena, CA 91125 |
|
Louis Sadler |
Head, Dept. of Biomedical Visualization |
University of Illinois |
Chicago, IL 60612 (M/C 527) |
|
Terrence J. Sejnowski |
Computational Neurobiology Lab |
Salk Institute |
San Diego, CA 92186-5800 |
|
Peter Stucki |
Institute for Informatics (Dept. of CS) |
Univ. of Zurich |
Zurich Switzerland |
|
Demetri Terzopoulos |
Dept. of CS |
University of Toronto |
Toronto, CANADA M5S 1A4 |
|
Thomas Vetter |
MIT AI Lab |
MIT |
Cambridge, MA 02139 |
|
Lance Williams |
Apple Computer, Inc. |
Cupertino, CA 95014 |
||
Alan Yuille |
Division of Applied Physics |
Harvard University |
Cambridge, MA 02138 |
|
Jun Zhang |
Salk Institute |
San Diego, CA 92186 |