New AI can read body language in real time

A new computer code could provide robots the capabilities to better understand the humans around them, paving the way for more perceptive machines, from self-driving cars to surveillance. The new technique allows a computer to understand body poses and movements of multiple people, even tracking parts as minute as individual fingers. While humans naturally communicate using body language, computers are'more or less blind' to these interactions – but, by tracking the 2D human form and motion, the new code could vastly improve robots' abilities in social situations. Multi-person tracking presents several challenges to computers – and, hand detection is even more of an obstacle. While image datasets on the human hand are far more limited than those on the face or body, the Panoptic Studio has allowed for unprecedented views of hand movement.