Evolutionary generation of faces

Citation

Hancock PJB & Frowd CD (2002) Evolutionary generation of faces. In: Bentley P & Corne D (eds.) Creative Evolutionary Systems. Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence. London: Academic Press, pp. 409-423. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781558606739500550

Abstract
This chapter describes a system that allows the evolutionary generation of near-photographic quality face images. The major anticipated use for such a system would be, allowing eyewitnesses to a crime to construct a likeness of the suspect. Current methods for doing this center on photofit-like composite systems. The user is presented with a large range of possible alternatives for major features, such as nose, mouth, and eyes and attempts to reconstruct a face piecemeal. The original photofit does not work very well, probably because it breaks the face into components in a way that we do not usually do when viewing a face. More recent systems, such as CD-fit, are far more flexible, allowing the position, size, and shape of individual features to be altered interactively on a computer. However, the essential problem of being a composite system remains. If you change, for example, the nose, our perception of the eyes and mouth may well change: we perceive faces holistically. The resultant images also look rather synthetic. The system described here produces face images by recombining principal components (eigenfaces), which are inherently global in nature and produce more photographic-like images.

People

Professor Peter Hancock

Professor, Psychology