"Stop Smile Stroll" is a public installation taking the shape of a playful intervention whilst waiting to cross the road. Citizens are invited to press a button which engages a camera. A few frames are temporarily recorded and analysed displaying messages and custom animations overlayed on facial features depending on the mood/emotion.

The project was a Playable City Bristol competition submission won by Hirsch & Mann and supported by Watershed Arts/Pervasive Media Studio.

I was responsible for the Computer Vision system which used facial landmark detection to overlay real-time animations. An initial prototype used Action Unit estimation for expression recognition, however better results were achieved using a custom trained Convolutional Neural Network using TensorFlow.

The experience and interaction was designed by the talented Joanne Harik.

Photography credits go to Jon Aitken