Effects of 3D Shape and Texture on Gender Identification for a Retro-Projected Face Screen

Retro-projected face displays have recently appeared as an alternative to mechanical robot faces, and stand apart by virtue of their flexibility: they are able to present a variety of faces varying in both realism and individual appearance. Here we examine the role of both 3D mask structure and texture image quality on the perception of gender in one such platform, the Mask-bot. In our experiments, we use three specific gender face screens as the 3D output—female, male and average masks—and display various face images that are gradually morphed between female and male on these screens. Additionally, we present three cases of morphed images: high quality texture, low quality texture, and averaged face texture from low quality data. Experiments were carried out over several days. 15 subjects rated the gender of each face projected on the female mask screen, and 10 subjects rated the gender of faces on the male and average screens. We found that even though the 3D mask screens have strong gender specific face features, gender identification is strongly determined by high-quality texture images. However, in the absence of strong texture cues or the presence of ambiguous information, the influence of the output structure may become more important. These results allow us to ascertain the ability to faithfully represent faces on these new platforms, and highlight the most important aspects—in this case texture—for correct perception. T. Kuratate (B) · M. Riley · G. Cheng Institute for Cognitive Systems, Technische Universität München, Karlstraße 45/II, München 80333, Germany e-mail: [email protected] M. Riley e-mail: [email protected] G. Cheng e-mail: [email protected]