Laptop build-in camera distortion problem

If you ever used laptop build-in camera for video conferencing, you will probably notice that your face is a bit distorted and not as pretty as the one inside a mirror. Actually, the same distortion happens for almost any cameras when the subject -- your face positions too close to them. For web cameras, wide-angle lens is used to jam in more environment, your face turns out to be even more funny.

Now that not everyone likes this distortion, and maybe it's an interesting application to flatten it. Assuming computation complexity is not a problem, it is possible to adjust each frame of image to de-distort it according to camera model and parameters before generating the video stream. An even more interesting approach is to build an accurate 3D model of your face, and dynamically manipulate it according to your facial expressions (while leaving less distorted, less important back ground as is). You can ask the software to pre-build your face model (not including hair of course) from several pictures of different angle. Or using a multi camera system, i.g., 3, from the left, center, and right side, to build it dynamically. This link shows a similar application using a single face picture. It's for fun, but surely shows the possibilities.

Thesis

Finally got the thesis writing done. The same old results, yet the procedure was full of struggling.

There's the saying that in order to do great things, you must aim high; another saying that the thousand miles journey starts with a single step forward. I guess I didn't really achieve a balance between these two, aiming too high, without a plan, only to discourage myself from stepping forward step by step. After all, I'm a normal person. But still, many great things are done by the normals.

"Welcome to the real-world, lad, where anything that is unthinkable is possible."