The folks at Disney Research have invented a process to clone real humans into silicone skinned robots. The results are pretty fascinating and scary at the same time. It's like Mission Impossible now. Their method involves analyzing the face of a target using 3D motion capture cameras, and it then calculates the precise shape, density and composition of a synthetic skin that mimics that specific human's expressions.
This is the paper description, presented at this years Siggraph by Disney Research's scientists in Zürich:
We propose a complete process for designing, simulating, and fabricating synthetic skin for an animatronics character that mimics the face of a given subject and its expressions. The process starts with measuring the elastic properties of a material used to manufacture synthetic soft tissue. Given these measurements we use physics-based simulation to predict the behavior of a face when it is driven by the underlying robotic actuation.
When the process captures the subject's expressions, the process will calculate how thick or thin the animatronics flesh should be at different points and its thickness allows for the perfect reproduction of humans' facial expressions.
They are actually call it "Physical Face Cloning." Check out the video below: [Disney Research via Siggraph via Dvice via Creator Project]
