Thrill Laboratory The Smiler

Brendan Walker, Paul Tennent and Michel Valstar's Thrill Laboratory applied facial expression recognition software developed by the School to the new Alton Towers ride. Journalists were analysed while riding The Smiler, due to open on 23 May, which was featured on ITV on 15 May.

http://www.itv.com/news/central/story/2013-04-23/alton-towers-new-ride

The facial expression recognition system was developed by Dr Michel Valstar's Automatic Human Behaviour Understanding team. Timur Almaev, a PhD student with Valstar, created a novel technique using Local Gabor Binary Patterns in Three Orthogonal Planes (LGBP-TOP), which can sense the movements of facial features in local space-time video volumes. The data was gathered using a specially adapted helmet-mounted, camera and the results were processed and presented for broadcast using the Vicarious data visualisation system developed in Horizon and the Mixed Reality Lab.