Institut für Informationsverarbeitung (TNT)

Kang Liu studied Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the Institute of Mechatronic Control Engineering, Zhejiang University, P.R.China. He recieved his Bachelor and Master Degree from Zhejiang University in 2001 and 2004, respectively. In March 2004 he moved to Hannover and started to pursue his PhD at the Institut für Informationsverarbeitung (TNT). He received his doctorate degree (Dr.-Ing.) from Leibniz Universität Hannover in June 2011. Currently, he works as a Post-doc in a facial animation project at TNT. His research interests are image processing, 3D modeling, facial animation, and human-computer interfaces.

He was awarded an ISCA Grant for participating in the ISCA sponsored conference, Interspeech 2008.

His excellent research work on facial animation received the Golden Lips Award for Audiovisual Consistency in the first visual speech synthesis challenge: LIPS 2008, Sept. 22-26, 2008 in Brisbane, Australia.

Kang Liu won the 2008 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad. The Award ceremony took place on 26. April, 2009 at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin.

Kang Liu is awarded a travel grant for participating at FG2011 (Face and Gesture Recognition). This grant is provided by National Science Foundation and it is managed through Colorado State University.

PhD Thesis:

Realistic and Expressive Talking Head: Implementation and Evaluation, Leibniz Universität Hannover, June 2011.

Publications

Show selected publications only

Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Evaluation of an Image-based Talking Head with Realistic Facial Expression and Head Motion
Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, Special issue: Emotion-based Interaction, October 2011
BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Realistic Facial Expression Synthesis for an Image-based Talking Head
IEEE Conference on Multimedia and Expo, ICME2011 , p. 6, Barcelona, Spain, July 2011
BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Evaluation of an Image-based Talking Head with Realistic Facial Expression and Head Motion
Proceedings of CASA (Computer Animation and Social Agents) workshop on Emotion-based Interaction, Chengdu, China, May 2011
BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Realistic Head Motion Synthesis for an Image-based Talking Head
FG 2011, The 9th IEEE Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition , p. 6, Santa Barbara, CA, March 2011
BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Image-based Talking Head: Analysis and Synthesis
DAGA 2010, 36. International Conference on Acoustics, Deutschen Gesellschaft für Akustik, pp. 87-88, Berlin, March 2010
(pdf) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Kang Liu, Jörn Ostermann
Video-realistic image-based eye animation via statistically driven state machines
The Visual Computer, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, November 2009
(pdf) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Minimized Database of Unit Selection in Visual Speech Synthesis Without Loss of Naturalness
The 13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns CAIP2009, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 1212-1219, Münster, Germany, September 2009, edited by X. Jiang and N. Petkov
(pdf) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Optimization of An Image-based Talking Head System
Special issue on animating virtual speakers or singers from audio: Lip-synching facial animation, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Vol. 2009, September 2009
(pdfLink) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
An Image-based Talking Head System
LIPS 2009 Special Session in AVSP 2009, Norwich, UK, September 2009
(pdf) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Video-Realistic Image-based Eye Animation System
EUROGRAPHICS 2009 (Short Paper), Munich, April 2009
(pdf) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Realistic Facial Animation System for Interactive Services
Interspeech 2008, LIPS 2008: Visual Speech Synthesis Challenge, Brisbane, Australia, September 2008
(pdf) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Realistic Talking Head for Human-Car-Entertainment Services
IMA 2008 Informationssysteme für mobile Anwendungen, GZVB e.V. (Hrsg.), pp. 108-118, Braunschweig, Germany, September 2008
(pdf) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Axel Weissenfeld, Joern Ostermann, Xinghan Luo
Robust AAM Building for Morphing in an Image-based Facial Animation System
IEEE Multimedia and Expo, 2008 IEEE International Conference on , Hannover, Germany, June 2008
(pdf) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Gesichtsanimation mit Image-based Rendering für Dialogsysteme
Telekommunikation Aktuell, Berichte aus Forschung und Entwicklung in Informationstechnik und Telekommunikation, 60. Jahrgang, Heft 07-12, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Leben, Erlangen, December 2006
(pdf) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Kang Liu, Wei Liu, Joern Ostermann
Image-based Head Animation System
1. Kongress Multimediatechnik 2006, Institut für Multimediatechnik GmbH -IFM, pp. 67-72, Wismar, November 2006
(pdf) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Onay Urfalioglu, Kang Liu, Joern Ostermann
Robust Rigid Head Motion Estimation based on Differential Evolution
IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo 2006, IEEE Multimedia and Expo, 2006 IEEE International Conference on, pp. 225 - 228, Toronto, CN, July 2006
(Download) BibTeX
Kang Liu, Axel Weissenfeld, Joern Ostermann
Parameterization of Mouth Images by LLE and PCA for Image-based Facial Animation
ICASSP06,Toulouse, France IEEE Proceedings, IEEE, Vol. 5, pp. 461-464, May 2006
(Download) BibTeX
Axel Weissenfeld, Kang Liu, Sven Klomp, Joern Ostermann
Personalized Unit Selection for an Image-based Facial Animation System
IEEE MMSP 2005, Shanghai/China, IEEE, November 2005
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PhD Thesis:

Educational activities

Software download

Demos: