Fast head pose estimation or fasthpe is a computer game written in c that allows
a user to shoot blue circles that appear on the screen with their head orientation alone. 
The game is completely automatic and requires no special hardware or devices.
It can be played on any computer/laptop with a webcam.

Fasthpe brings together a number of simple computer vision techniques to allow the automatic initialization,
tracking and pose estimation of a human face. 
The result is a real-time (2ms) head orientation estimation algorithm,
details of which can be found in the fasthpe technical report.

This software was developed as part of an undergraduate thesis within the department
of Systems & Control Engineering (SCE) at the University of Malta in 2009.


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General Information
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Implementation of the Head Pose Estimation algorithm as described in:
M. Sapienza and K.P. Camilleri, “Fasthpe: A recipe for quick head pose estimation,” 
Department of Systems & Control Engineering, University of Malta,” Technical Report, 2011.

and as seen in the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MfKMT-tfMs

This software was developed as part of an undergraduate thesis 
within the department of 'Systems & Control Engineering (SCE)' 
at the University of Malta in 2008-2009.


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How to use (Ubuntu Linux)
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Note: this software is able to run on Windows and Mac with minor tweaks.

Prerequisites:
- Install the OPENCV Library (version 2.2 +)
- Install SoX sound processing software to play sounds in ubuntu: "sudo apt-get install sox" (Only necessary for gunshot sound in game)

Install:
1) Unpack code.
2) Open a terminal and navigate to the directory containing the code.
3) Type "make" to compile "fasthpe".
4) To run fasthpe on sample video file type "./fasthpe videos/ssm9.mpg".
5) To play game yourself from webcam stream plug in webcam and just type "./fasthpe"

Example:
Open Terminal: CTRL+ALT t
~$ cd ~/Downloads
~$ unzip fasthpe-0.1.zip -d ~/your/path/
~$ cd ~/your/path/fasthpe-0.1
~$ make
~$ ./fasthpe videos/ssm9.mpg



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How to cite
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@techreport{sapienza-2011,
  author       = "Michael Sapienza and Kenneth P. Camilleri",
  title        = "Fasthpe: A recipe for quick head pose estimation",
  type	       = "Technical Report",
  institution  = "Department of Systems \& Control Engineering, University of Malta",
  year 	       = "2011"
}



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List of Contributors
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Michael Sapienza
Kenneth Camilleri
Kenneth Scerri



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ToDo
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System will fail if not all the face features are visible from the webcam.

Unsatisfactory performance if the lighting conditions are not favourable. 

It currently uses an image resolution of 320x240; needs changing to work with variable camera resolution.