Category: FaceSense

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VRTV’s Week In Recap: Tech Wizards, Space Wizards And Wizard Wizards

Life as a chestbursting alien, a world record, Oculus launches a contest to find the best wizard, Palmer Luckey returns from the social media wilderness and Nokia getting set to take you to a galaxy far, far away are just some of the virtual reality (VR) related technology, experiences and stories that have come out all within the last week.

As usual, Nina is here to guide you through all the stories of the last seven days with VRTV. What stories really caught your eye this week? Let us know in the comments.

This week’s stories, click here for more information on each:

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Samsung’s Facesense Recognizes Facial Expressions For VR Navigation

Samsung’s Facesense Recognizes Facial Expressions For VR Navigation

With body language, humans are able to express a range of feelings with only the most the subtle shifts in demeanor. Our facial expressions alone can show off a huge range of responses. Interaction with VR is something various companies continue to try to nail down, attempting to enable users to manipulate these worlds while breaking immersion as little as possible. Samsung’s experimental Facesense is a new attempt at changing the game, harnessing the power of our facial expression for hands-free VR interaction.

April 14th – 15th at the VRLA Expo, Samsung showed a new creation from their  C-Lab division. C-Lab cultivates ideas that are more experimental and this particular one provides a new way to navigate within VR. Detailed in an announcement, Facesense tracks electric signals that are created any time we speak, change our expression, or shift our gaze. Those signals are then used for navigation input along with a few spoken commands.

We tried the technology at VRLA briefly and it was a very early concept. It likely won’t be something that dominates as a primary means of interaction within VR, but it could be a complement to VR controllers. We’ll have to see if Facesense can find a degree of consistency with its input across all users. It could also serve as an option for those that cannot use VR controllers, opening up accessibility to virtual technology in a big way.

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Samsung’s FaceSense Enables Hands-Free VR Interfacing

Companies are experimenting with numerous ways to interact with virtual reality (VR) environments, from data gloves and haptic vests, to eye tracking and omni-directional treadmills. As Samsung has become one of the big VR players with the popular Gear VR head-mounted display (HMD), its also keen on developing some fresh new ideas on what can be achieved. At the recent VRLA 2017 event the company showcased an experimental project called FaceSense, a way of navigating VR using facial movement.

Developed by C-Lab (Creative Lab), Samsung’s startup business program that nurtures its employees’ innovative ideas – remember Rink? – FaceSense recognises and translates facial biometric signals, turning the data into navigational signals. When wearing a VR headset users faces constantly generate electric signals when they speak or change expression.

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Samsung demonstrated a prototype at VRLA 2017 using a Gear VR fitted with 11 electrodes to gather the biometric signals. Using specialised algorithms, the technology not only registers movement in the user’s eyes and facial muscles, it was also capable of understanding certain words such as ‘home’, ‘back’, ‘select’ and ‘cancel’ to aid in the process.

While this early design is geared around hands-free interfacing, so that a users doesn’t need the touchpad or a Bluetooth controller, the technology also has more far reaching applications. It could allow VR to be opened up to more individuals who don’t currently use the tech due to usage impediments, such as the loss of a limb or paralysis for example.

Other technologies like eye-tracking could also aid in this avenue of VR development, not only aiding wider consumer usage but also increasing the immersive qualities of VR.

These are still early days for FaceSense and it may not even get past the prototyping stage but hopefully Samsung will demo it further to gauge consumer reaction.

This isn’t the first time biometric sensor techniques have been used in VR. Last year VRFocus reported on Emteq and its Faceteq technology.

VRFocus will continue to follow the progress of FaceSense, reporting back with any further updates.