Keyboard encoding of facial expressions

The paper focuses on the development of a human-computer communication method which utilizes the user´s typing skills to control the facial expression of a computer-generated 3D face. The method is based on the realization that the human face is a movable and deformable system with 26 degrees of freedom (the same number as the letters of the English alphabet). Therefore it is possible to create a parameterized graphical facial model confined to a set of 26 parameters each one controlled by a letter key. The method is an extension of the KUI technique (Adamo-Villani and Beni, 2004; Adamo-Villani and Beni, 2003) recently developed to encode hand gestures.