Instead, her algorithm turns only the face and inserts it seamlessly into the original image.

In contrast to previous solutions, Kuster and her colleagues do not turn the entire video image including the background, thus avoiding the problem of missing information in the original image resulting in gaps appearing in the rotated picture. The software uses a depth map calculated from the image information and a programme that recognises faces in real-time video. Thanks to Kinect, a new generation of cameras that collect colour and depth information simultaneously, the system is available for home use. This is now changing thanks to the new software that Kuster has developed under the guidance of Markus Gross, Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. No satisfactory solution to the problem has existed for private use. Until now, only larger companies have been able to afford the luxury of creating artificial eye contact during video conferences this has required complex mirror systems or several cameras and special software.

“We want to make video conference calls as similar as possible to a real meeting,' said Claudia Kuster, a doctoral student at the Computer Graphics Laboratory ETH Zurich. Researchers are now offering a solution to the problem for everyday use: software that recognises the face in the video and rotates it so that the person appears to be looking at the camera. This problem arises because the speaker looks mainly at their counterpart’s picture instead of at the camera.

Skype technologies s.a