Computer scientists finding ways to see you naked

Ah the boring life that computer scientists at Brown University must be leading. Sure they couch their work with social benefiting ideals like how this software will help forensic teams or sports medicine but more likely they probably just wanted to figure out how to see all those hot women without clothes without getting arrested.

Okay I’m Joking but Michael Black; a professor of computer science at Brown, along with graduate student Alexandru Balan believe that they have found a way to tell what a person likes under their clothes using only a video of that person. It appears that Brown University itself believes pretty strongly in what the two have developed because they have filed two provisional patents covering the research and any potential commercial applications.

As far as commercial applications Science Daily suggests this work could be useful in a number of areas

The potential applications are broad. Besides forensics and fashion, Black and Balan’s research could benefit the film industry. Currently, actors must wear tight-fitting suits covered with reflective markers to have their motion captured. The new approach could capture both the actors’ shape and motion, while doing away with the markers and suits.

In sports medicine, doctors would be able to use accurate, computerized models of athletes’ bodies to better identify susceptibility to injury. In the gaming world, it could mean the next generation of interactive technology. Instead of acting through a character, a camera could track the user, create a 3-D representation of that person’s body and insert the user into the video game.

Me, I just think a couple of computer scientists got bored documenting silly things like building computer models of when the sun will explode or some such boring stuff. But just in case you’re interested in this head over here for some video courtesy of the team at Brown University