Antonia Hamilton & Marco Gillies (Goldsmiths) awarded Leverhulme Trust grant.

Antonia Hamilton & Marco Gillies (Goldsmiths) have been awarded a grant of £314,885 from the Leverhulme Trust to study “Understanding and generating real-time face-to-face social interactions”.

Abstract: Two people engaged in conversation coordinate in many ways, including facial actions, gestures, words, and posture.  This project aims to test cognitive theories of non-verbal behaviour and advance computational models of this behaviour.  To do so, we will capture the face motion of dyads in conversation using new technologies, and test how social priming changes interactive behaviour.  Furthermore, we will use machine learning to predict the actions of one partner from the other, and generate avatars showing these actions.  The results will advance current theories of social interaction and simulations of interactive behaviour.