[HN Gopher] Handsfree.js - integrate face, hand, and/or pose tra...
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       Handsfree.js - integrate face, hand, and/or pose tracking to front
       end projects
        
       Author : detaro
       Score  : 138 points
       Date   : 2021-06-05 12:04 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | ranguna wrote:
       | Wow this is amazing! I remember a few years ago in my thesis I
       | was trying to use something similar in ROS to detect hand
       | gestures and make a robot drive toward you, it's incredible to
       | see this in the browser!
        
       | rgovostes wrote:
       | On Safari for Mac, you must enable Develop - Experimental
       | Features - WebGL 2.0.
        
       | esens wrote:
       | I have tried the underlying library, MediaPipe/TensorFlowJS, and
       | it is only okay. Once you try to use it for visual augmentation,
       | I found it doesn't track that well and it has problems with
       | scale.
       | 
       | So, while it may look good with the skeletons, notice they do not
       | have useful demos, mostly just proof of concept demos that do
       | almost nothing.
        
         | blensor wrote:
         | Have you tried the newest MoveNet from google? That thing works
         | really well. I only started experimenting with the Lighting
         | model (not Thunder) for our VR game but even that is pretty
         | robust.
         | 
         | If you want to see how stable it is, have a look at that:
         | https://youtu.be/zz9S5hgrWpM?t=147
         | 
         | It's tracking me with the Oculus Quest on the head, so it does
         | not even have facial features to go on
        
           | jonplackett wrote:
           | Thanks for the link - Does MoveNet give you 3D positions /
           | rotations for each joint or just a 2D position on the image?
        
             | blensor wrote:
             | Just the 2D positions plus a confidence level. In the video
             | we are using only one view so it's no true full body
             | tracking yet. We are currently trying to use two views to
             | get a rough 3D tracking. The good thing is that the
             | positions of the detected points are relatively stable so
             | with a big enough baseline that should work out for a rough
             | 3D pose estimation
        
       | gregsadetsky wrote:
       | I'll use this post / opportunity to ask the HN community
       | 
       | (I understand that this is a technically complicated, and
       | potentially sensitive subject)
       | 
       | I've been approached by a few people who are doing what they can
       | to lower the cost of prescription glasses. It's a mix of
       | (licensed) ophthalmologists, people interested in offering
       | community health services, etc.
       | 
       | What is the current state of the art for pupillary distance (PD)
       | measurement based on face detection / pupil tracking using laptop
       | webcams or mobile (front) cameras?
       | 
       | I imagine (obviously?) that there must be scholar research on the
       | acceptable error margins for a PD measurement (depending on the
       | type of vision condition, i.e. farsightedness, etc.)?
       | 
       | Would using something like Handsfree.js or
       | https://github.com/esimov/pigo (which has pupil detection) be a
       | good start, or would these be an ~order of magnitude off in terms
       | of the necessary margins?
       | 
       | Thanks a lot.
        
         | notum wrote:
         | It comes down to physics. Cameras and their lenses come in all
         | shapes and sizes, most of webcams don't expose their geometry
         | in a programmatically accessible way, even if they did, most of
         | them don's have means of determining distance to the subject.
         | 
         | We can detect faces, eyes and pupils, but with no reference
         | points we have no idea how big or far apart they are.
        
           | gregsadetsky wrote:
           | Thanks!
           | 
           | What about sites (such as Warby Parker) that make you hold up
           | a credit card (which has a standard size) and use that to
           | determine (via what I assume is a rule of three) the PD? [0]
           | 
           | I can see of course problems with the card not being
           | "perpendicular" and other 3d distortions.
           | 
           | [0] - https://www.warbyparker.com/pd/instructions
        
         | mncharity wrote:
         | Fwiw, there's https://www.eyeque.com/pdcheck/ .
         | 
         | And Google's MediaPipe Iris used iris diameter for distance
         | estimation.[1]
         | 
         | EyeQue is perhaps a cautionary tale. "Change the world" "few
         | dollars of optics + phone = D+CYL" become $45 one-person-per-
         | subscription "vision tracker".
         | 
         | [1] https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/08/mediapipe-iris-real-
         | time-i...
        
       | twobitshifter wrote:
       | What are some of the applications for this?
        
         | umvi wrote:
         | You could integrate this with adtech to help make
         | advertisements more interactive and to analyze how the viewer
         | is receiving the ad by their pose and facial expressions. Based
         | on that you could have an algorithm serve only ads that improve
         | facial expressions and poses to positive ones
        
           | Solocomplex wrote:
           | Another excellent reason to disable JavaScript in your
           | browser
        
           | jcdietrich wrote:
           | Could play punch the monkey!
        
           | lolinder wrote:
           | I hope we haven't yet gotten to the point where people will
           | mindlessly click "Yes!" when a random website asks for webcam
           | access.
        
         | Gys wrote:
         | https://github.com/midiblocks/handsfree#examples
        
         | blensor wrote:
         | I can't speak about this specific project but pose tracking in
         | the browser can actually be really useful to get it on mobile
         | without the need for dedicated apps.
         | 
         | We are currently experimenting with using phones (or tablets or
         | basically anything with a browser and a camera) as a tracking
         | source for full body tracking on the Oculus Quest ([1]) and
         | being able to just use a Tensorflow model in the browser has
         | cut down the time of development on the mobile device side to
         | almost nothing.
         | 
         | There are of course a whole lot of other issues one buys into
         | with that approach (browser security policies, the whole thing
         | not working in certain countries due to problems with loading
         | the model) but that's manageable
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz9S5hgrWpM (relevant part
         | starts at 0:29)
        
         | danielskogly wrote:
         | I found this demo of him playing "Into the Breach" with only
         | Face Gestures very impressive!
         | https://twitter.com/GoingHandsfree/status/140022171083874713...
        
         | notjustanymike wrote:
         | WebXR comes to mind.
        
       | albybisy wrote:
       | the library and the demos are not loading for me.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-05 23:00 UTC)