Adam Moran – Computer Vision Gestures

I’m going to say this right now. I’m a boring individual. I don’t have many activities that I’m passionate about, especially ones involving lots of movement (unless it’s pacing; I seem to like doing that). But I do like cats, including wild cats. When I saw that I can use Max to check for motion between webcam frames, I had a good idea of what I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, my video recording software didn’t like recording from the webcam (or, at the very least, didn’t like recording the screen and webcam at the same time). But thanks to the patch, you can still see the interaction. I used the motion scrubber patch as a base, but changed what happens with the output after it passes through cooked motion. It instead plays one of five videos of a leopard. Its default state is sleeping in a tree. However, if it detects sufficient movement, it’ll get out of the tree and begin prowling. During this phase, the patch records how much motion is going on. If it surpasses a threshold, the leopard claims its prey (you) and locks interaction (there’s a reset button in the patch to unlock interaction again). If the movement does not surpass the threshold, the leopard will climb back up the tree and return to its nap.

Here is the patch:

3 Comments Add yours

  1. Isaiah Fleischer says:

    You took a novel approach to interactivity, and it really paid off! I really enjoy how we’re acting out a choose-your-own-adventure. It’s very cool that we get to decide the outcome of the video clips by acting the way we’d actually behave if we were being hunted by a cheetah!

  2. Jarod Romankiw says:

    Great interactivity. I like how you demonstrate being attacked by a cheetah with movement. Cheetah’s are my favorite.

  3. Aidan Sensiba says:

    This is a cool idea that I think could be the basis of a full game. I like that your slightest movements, even if by accident, give you a second-by-second presence in the story.

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