Patent Document

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS  
       [0001]     This is a division of Non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 10/329,653, filed Dec. 26, 2002. 
     
    
     OTHER REFERENCES  
       [0002]     Brunelli, R. and Poggio, T., Face Recognition: Features versus Templates, IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 15, No. 10, October 1993, pp. 1042-1052.  
       STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH  
       [0003]     Not Applicable  
       REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING, TABLE, OR COMPUTER PROGRAM LISTING  
       [0004]     Not Applicable  
       BACKGROUND  
       [0005]     1. Field of Invention  
         [0006]     This invention relates to an amusement machine, specifically to such amusement machine which is capable of rating the degree of attractiveness of a user from his/her facial image.  
         [0007]     2. Description of Prior Art  
         [0008]     Nowadays, in the computer technology era, a lot of computerized entertainment machines are receiving a lot of attentions from many people. As we can see that there are increasing numbers of amusement machines such as arcade games, sticker kiosks, or automatic photography booths available in many public places like theme parks and shopping malls. These machines serve the need of a user in providing amusement to the user. However, people normally get bored very quickly with these amusement machines, so they constantly look for a new kind of entertainment, especially a bizarre one. The present invention aims to offer users with a unique kind of entertainment which has never been introduced before.  
         [0009]     At the present time, all of the inventions relate to the field of amusement machines involving the manipulation of user facial images are found in the form of automatic photograph booths, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,148,148 (2000) and U.S. Pat. No. 6,229,904 (2001). The operation of these booths typically involves users sitting or standing in front of a digital/analog camera to have their images taken. The images are manually or automatically manipulated to modify image attributes such as background/foreground or to blend multiple images together. The manipulated images are developed and then dispensed to the users. However, none of these conventional automatic photograph booths has the capability of analyzing facial images and matching them against the facial images stored in a database as the present invention does. Moreover, none of the amusement machines in the prior art has the ability to assign an approximate quantitative value to a qualitative attribute, such as the attractiveness of a person face, as the present invention does.  
       SUMMARY  
       [0010]     In accordance with the present invention a machine comprises a computer, a camera, a computer screen, a track ball, a select button, a lighting means, a coin/bill receptor, audio speakers, a background curtain, a method of facial image matching, and a method of attractiveness rating.  
         [0011]     The machine, an automatic celebrity face matching and attractiveness rating machine, automatically analyzes a facial image of the individual, and compares it to a collection of the celebrity facial images previously stored in the machine&#39;s computer to identify which celebrity most closely resembles the individual. Furthermore, the facial image is analyzed to establish a measure of the attractiveness of the individual. Both the matching result and the attractiveness score are reported to the individual.  
       OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES  
       [0012]     This invention aims to offer users a new kind of entertainment by providing answers to some trivial questions that a curious individual might have. Ones might wonder which celebrity they look like or how good they look. Here, the present invention is created to answer these two trivial questions to an individual in an interesting and humorous fashion.  
         [0013]     Accordingly, several objects and advantages of the present invention are:  
         [0014]     (a) to provide a machine which is mainly used for amusement purpose.  
         [0015]     (b) to provide an amusement machine which can report to an individual which celebrity the individual looks like the most.  
         [0016]     (c) to provide an amusement machine which can report to an individual approximately how much attractiveness the individual is.  
         [0017]     (d) to provide a method in assigning an approximate quantitative value to a qualitative attribute such as the attractiveness of a person face.  
         [0018]     (e) to provide such amusement machine which can be used to generate income.  
         [0019]     Further objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings. 
     
    
     DRAWING FIGURES  
       [0020]      FIG. 1  is a diagrammatic perspective view of one form of a machine according to the invention.  
         [0021]      FIG. 2  shows a front view of the machine.  
         [0022]      FIG. 3  shows a rear view of the machine.  
         [0023]      FIG. 4  illustrates a component diagram of the machine.  
         [0024]      FIG. 5  illustrates a flowchart of the main computer program of the machine.  
         [0025]      FIG. 6  illustrates a flowchart of the face matching program.  
         [0026]      FIG. 7  illustrates a diagram of the degree of attractiveness estimator. 
     
    
     REFERENCE NUMERALS IN DRAWINGS  
       [0027]    
       
         
               
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
               
               
                   
               
             
             
               
                 11 
                 camera 
                 12 
                 lighting means 
               
               
                 13 
                 computer screen 
                 14 
                 small speaker 
               
               
                 15 
                 track ball 
                 16 
                 selectz button 
               
               
                 17 
                 coin/bill receptor 
                 18 
                 background curtain 
               
               
                 19 
                 main speaker 
                 20 
                 computer 
               
               
                 21 
                 base section 
                 22 
                 neck section 
               
               
                 23 
                 head section 
                 24 
                 cooling fan 
               
               
                 25 
                 base section lid 
                 26 
                 power cord 
               
               
                 27 
                 power cord entry 
                 28 
                 curtain controller 
               
               
                   
               
             
          
         
       
     
       DESCRIPTION  
       [0028]     A preferred embodiment of the machine of the present invention is illustrated in  FIG. 1 .  FIG. 1  is an isometric view of one form of the machine constructed in accordance with the invention. The machine is in the form of a floor-standing type, and comprises a base section  21 , a neck section  22 , a head section  23 , and a curtain controller  28 . The base section  21 , made of painted wood board or metal sheet, has a flat portion in the front to serve as a designated area for a person to stand on. A cooling fan  24  is installed on one side of the base section  21  to provide enough ventilation within the base section  21  to prevent a computer  20  mounted inside the base section  21  from overheating. A power cord  26  comes out from the back of the base section  21 . Its function is to provide enough electricity needed by the machine. The computer  20  is a Personal Computer with at least one Gigahertz Microprocessor and at least 128 Megabytes of Random-Access Memory (RAM). The operating system of the computer  20  can be any operating system, preferably either WINDOWS or LINUX.  
         [0029]     The neck section  22 , which is also made of painted wood board or metal sheet, has a main speaker  19 , with a built-in audio amplifier, on each side of the neck section  22 . The main speaker  19  is an outdoor-type audio speaker, which is waterproof. The neck section  22  also has a coin/bill receptor  17  located in the front. The coin/bill receptor  17  functions like a standard coin/bill receptor, which can sense how much money a user put in and dispense changes back to the user if the amount of money the user put in over the programmed limit. The coin/bill receptor  17  has a key lock and can be accessed by only authorized persons.  
         [0030]     The head section  23 , which is also made of painted wood board or metal sheet, contains a computer screen  13 , a lighting means  12 , a track ball  15 , a select button  16 , and two small speakers  14 . A camera  11  is mounted on top of the head section  23 , and its field of view covers the whole area of a background curtain  18 , which can be manually pulled down by a user or automatically dropped by the curtain controller  28 . The color of the background curtain  18  is a solid color, most preferably a dark tone color such as blue or green. The background curtain  18  can be made of cloth or plastic. The curtain controller  28  controls the elevation of the background curtain  18  according to a command from the computer  20 .  
         [0031]      FIG. 2  shows a front view of the machine that the user will see when standing on the designated area between the camera  11  and the background curtain  18 . The camera  11  is a standard fixed/auto-focus charge-coupled device (CCD) camera or a digital video camera with resolution at least 640 by 480 pixels, and can be either color or monochrome camera. A regular analog video camera can also be used; however, a frame grabber must be installed in the computer  20  to digitize a single frame of video into a digitized frame. The computer screen  13  can be a regular color computer monitor or a color computer LCD screen. Beside the computer screen  13  are located the lighting means  12 , most preferably a fluorescent lighting means, for providing enough illumination of a user face to the camera  11 .  
         [0032]     A computer pointing device, the track ball  15  in this present embodiment, provides the user the control of the motion of a pointer displayed on the computer screen  13 . The function of the track ball  15  is similar to a regular pointing device, called “mouse”, used with a personal computer. The user can choose whatever options displayed to the user on the computer screen  13  by gently spinning the track ball  15  until the pointer locates on top of the option the user would like to choose. Then, the user pushes on the select button  16  to choose that option. The select button  16  is a regular push button that closes a circuit when the button is pushed. In general, both the track ball  15  and the select button  16  can be interchangeable with other devices such as an electrostatic touch-pad, which is widely used in notebook computers. In a different embodiment of the present invention, both the track ball  15  and the select button  16  can be totally eliminated by replacing the computer screen  13  with a touch-screen computer monitor, which the user can choose the options displayed on the computer screen by directly touching them. The two small speakers  14  are standard computer speakers with built-in audio amplifiers, and are waterproof.  
         [0033]      FIG. 3  shows a rear view of the machine without showing the curtain controller  28  at the top of the figure. A base section lid  25  is used to conceal the computer  20  located inside the base section  21  from unauthorized access from outside. The machine owner or administrator can access the computer  20  through the base section lid  25  to make changes or update the program stored in the hard disc of the computer  20 . A power cord entry  27  is a two-centimeter circular hole, which is located to the right of the base section lid  25 . The power cord  26  passes the power cord entry  27  into the base section  21 , and connects to a power supply of the computer  20 . This power supply provides electricity to not only the computer  20  but also the camera  11 , the lighting means  12 , the computer screen  13 , the small speaker  14 , the track ball  15 , the select button  16 , the coin/bill receptor  17 , the main speaker  19 , the cooling fan  24 , and the curtain controller  28 , as shown in  FIGS. 1 and 2 .  
         [0034]      FIG. 4  illustrates a component diagram of the machine. It shows how each component, which has been previously mentioned in above paragraphs, in the machine connects to each other. It also shows the flow direction of the data between a pair of components which are connected to each other. It is obvious from the diagram that every component is connected to the computer  20 . The camera  11  is connected to the computer  20 , and provides a single digital image to the computer  20  whenever the camera  11  receives a command from the computer  20 . The arrow connecting between the camera  11  and the computer  20  shows the data flow in both directions.  
         [0035]     Both the track ball  15  and the select button  16  are also connected to the computer  20 , and provide the pointer motion and the user select inputs to the computer  20 , respectively. There is only one-way communications between the track ball  15  and the computer  20 , which is also true for the select button  16 ; therefore, the arrow connecting between the track ball  15  and the computer  20  shows the data flow in only one direction, which is toward the computer  20 . The coin/bill receptor  17  is also connected to the computer  20 . It provides an input to the computer  20  as to how much money has been sensed at the coin/bill receptor  17 . Once, the amount of money sensed at the coin/bill receptor  17  is equal to or more than the preprogrammed amount. The computer  20  sends command to the coin/bill receptor  17  to reject all coin or bill that is further put in by the user. If change is needed, the computer  20  instructs the coin/bill receptor  17  to return the change to the user.  
         [0036]     The lighting means  12 , the computer screen  13 , the small speaker  14 , the main speaker  19 , and the curtain controller  28  are also directly connected to the computer  20 . All of them receive commands from the computer  20 , but none of them send any input back to the computer  20 , which can be clearly seen from the directions of the arrows shown in the figure. The lighting means  12  is turned on or off by the command sent from the computer  20 . The computer screen  13  and the small speaker  14  are used by the computer  20  as a means for communicating with the user. The main speaker  19  is mainly used by the computer  20  for advertisement purpose. The curtain controller  28  receives an elevation command from the computer  20 , and adjusts the height of the background curtain  18  accordingly.  
         [0037]      FIG. 5  illustrates a flowchart of the main computer program controlling the operation of the machine. This computer program resides in the computer  20 . The program starts by step S 1  senses money at the coin/bill receptor  17 . After enough money has been sensed, step S 2  instructs the machine to automatically lower the background curtain  18 . Next, step S 3  directs the user to look straight at the camera  11  by displaying a message on the computer screen  13 . When the user is ready, he/she presses the select button  16  to take his/her frontal facial image according to the message on the computer screen  13  issued by step S 4 . In step S 5 , the image is temporarily stored in the computer hard disc as a Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).  
         [0038]     Before the face matching process begins, step S 6  instructs the machine to display a message asking the user to select a category of the existing image databases, e.g., actors, actresses, politicians, singers, sports stars, etc. Once the user has selected the category in step S 6 , the face recognition or matching program, whose detailed flowchart is shown in  FIG. 6 , is utilized in step S 7  to identify a face in the selected image database yielding the closest match.  
         [0039]     Next, in step S 8 , the geometrical features are input into the degree of attractiveness estimator, which will be discussed in detail later in  FIG. 7 . The degree of attractiveness estimator is then produced the approximate number indicating the degree of attractiveness. This number can range from 0 to 100, where 100 means very attractive and 0 mean very unattractive. Finally, in step S 9 , the machine displays both results, the most similar celebrity and the degree of attractiveness, on the computer screen  13 , and holds the results for one minute. After step S 9  is completed, the main program automatically returns to step S 1  and the whole processes are repeated all over again.  
         [0040]      FIG. 6  illustrates a flowchart of the face matching program. First, in process P 1 , the program reads a user facial image from the computer hard disc, and temporarily stores the user facial image in the computer memory. Next, in process P 2 , the format of the user facial image is converted from the red-green-blue (RGB) format into the intensity (gray-scale) format. This can be accomplished by assigning the intensity value of each pixel in the intensity image with the average value of the intensity values of the three colors of the corresponding pixel in the RGB image.  
         [0041]     Next, in process P 3 , facial features (such as eyes, nose, mouth, and chin) are automatically extracted from the user facial image in the intensity format. The facial feature extraction method, which is described in the paper titled “Face Recognition: Features versus Templates” by R. Brunelli and T. Poggio in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Volume 15, Number 10, October 1993, is used to extract the facial features. In total, thirty-five facial features are extracted from the user facial image. These facial features are basically numbers representing relative positions and sizes of each facial feature in the user facial image.  
         [0042]     Next, in process P 4 , the above thirty-five facial features are normalized by the face width, which is measured at nose position. The normalized facial features now become geometrical features, P 5 , of the user facial image. These geometrical features, P 5 , are very important. They are not only used in the following matching process P 6 , but also used in the following attractiveness rating process, which is discussed in  FIG. 7 . In process P 6 , the matching is obtained by computing the Euclidean norms of all vectors originating from the vector of the geometrical features of the user facial image to those of the celebrity facial images previously stored in the computer hard disc. The celebrity facial image corresponding to the smallest Euclidean norm is the closest match, and that celebrity facial image is declared in process P 7  to be the most similar face to the user facial image.  
         [0043]      FIG. 7  illustrates a diagram of the degree of attractiveness estimator. The main function of the estimator is to assign a number to each set of geometrical features of a facial image presented to the estimator. The number is then used as an attractiveness measure or an estimated attractiveness score, where a higher number indicates more attractive or desirable than a lower number. The number, however, is only a coarse estimate since qualitative attributes such as attractiveness and goodness in fact are not measurable.  
         [0044]     The estimator comprises an artificial neural network, commonly referred to as a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) as indicated in box B 2 . The MLP used in the present invention has four layers: one input layer, two hidden layers, and one output layer. The four layers are fully connected to form the MLP. The input layer has thirty-five input nodes, which is equal to the number of geometrical features obtained from process P 5 . Each of the hidden layers has five neurons. The number of neurons in each hidden layer is not fixed, and can be changed independently to improve the accuracy of the estimated attractiveness score produced by the MLP. The output layer has only one output node, which corresponds to the estimated attractiveness score in box B 3 .  
         [0045]     Before the MLP can be used to estimate the attractiveness score, the MLP must be trained by a group of data called a training set. The training set is composed of sets of the geometrical features of facial images of different individuals and corresponding attractive scores assigned to each of the facial images. These scores can be obtained from polls or surveys by asking many people to assign scores to the facial images provided. Each of the geometrical features of the training set is then fed as the input to the MLP at the input layer while the corresponding attractive score is provided to the MLP as the desired output at the output layer. One by one, the MLP learns to produce the desired output from the provided input by systematically changing weights in the neurons in both hidden layers. The learning process of the MLP can be accomplished by using either the conventional back-propagation algorithm or the well-known genetic algorithm. Once the MLP has been well trained to reproduce the correct corresponding attractive score at the output layer whenever there is a set of geometrical features of a facial image presented at the input layer. That MLP can now be used to give an estimated number or score of the degree of attractiveness of any facial image.  
       OPERATION  
       [0046]     In operation the user stands between the camera  11  and the background curtain  18 . After the user inserts enough money into the coin/bill receptor  17 , the machine displays a greeting message on the computer screen  13  and sounds a greeting voice through the small speaker  14  while lowers the background curtain  18 . Next, the machine turns on the lighting means  12  and directs the user to position his/her head before pressing the select button  16  to take his/her facial image. The machine counts down from 3 to 1 and takes the image. Then, the machine asks the user whether he/she would like to retake the image. If not, the machine proceeds by displaying the categories of celebrities such as movie stars, singers, sports stars, politicians, etc. The user uses the track ball  15  and the select button  16  to choose a celebrity category. After the user has selected the celebrity category, the machine automatically extracts the geometrical features of the user&#39;s facial image and compares it to the entire collection images in the category to determine a best match. Then, the machine determines the estimated score of the user&#39;s attractiveness. Finally, the machine displays the matching result and the score to the user on the computer screen  13 .  
         [0047]     Whenever there is no one using the machine for a certain period of time, say five minutes. The machine rolls up the background curtain  18  by using the curtain controller  28 , and starts to advertise itself by displaying preprogrammed advertisement video and audio clips on the computer screen  13  and the main speaker  19 , respectively. This advertisement keeps going until it is stopped when money is sensed at the coin/bill receptor  17 .  
       RAMIFICATIONS  
       [0048]     The method of estimating the degree of attractiveness of the human face as taught by this invention can be applied as a means for prescreening applicants for job positions in which the applicant appearances play an important role, for example, models, receptionists, and stewardesses.  
         [0049]     The method of estimating the degree of attractiveness of the human face as taught by this invention can be also used to determine a perfect face (the face that its geometrical features yields 100 for the attractiveness score). This perfect face can then be used as an outline for creating very appealing human characters in cartoon or animation movies.

Technology Category: 3