Authors: G. Williams, C. Bregler, P. Hackney, S. Rosenthal, I. McDowall, K. Smolskiy

NYU-TR-2008-915

Abstract:

This paper describes a new visual representation of mo- tion that is used to learn and classify body language - what we call “body signatures” - of people while they are talk- ing. We applied this technique to several hours of internet videos and television broadcasts that include US politicians and leaders from Germany, France, Iran, Russia, Pakistan, and India, and public figures such as the Pope, as well as numerous talk show hosts and comedians. Dependent on the complexity of the task, we show up to 80% recognition per- formance and clustering into broader body language cate- gories.

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