Building systems for adaptive tracking of facial features across individuals and groups

A non-transitory computer readable medium for use on a computer system for storing computer-readable program code, the computer readable program code comprising:

• a. a computer code module for receiving a video sequence that constitutes a physical record of the face of a specified individual person;
• b. a computer code module for applying a feature locator update model to the video sequence;
• c. a computer code module for defining a set of training data consisting of training images with associated facial feature locations;
• d. a computer code module for generating a set of facial feature displacements for each training image with associated image sample vectors;
• e. a computer code module for training a regularized linear regression which maps from image sample vectors to displacement vectors, wherein the regularized linear regression is characterized by regularization that includes a spatial smoothness term within the shape-free sample space, thereby generating the feature locator update model;
• f. a computer code module for extracting a plurality of feature locations corresponding to an adaptive set of feature locations;
• g. a computer code module characterizing the plurality of feature locations of the face of the specified individual person based on the feature update model;
• and
• h. a computer code module for storing the plurality of feature locations to a non-transient medium.