Chudo: App that turns you into an animated emoji thanks to clever face tracking technology

A team of Russian Engineers have developed a messaging app “Chudo” which brings Animoji-like functionality to your budget phones. Before now, flagship phones have been the loggerheads to making animated emoji due to the presence of a 3D camera which can track your face.

However, a Russian company called “Magic Unicorn” have come up with a solution that doesn’t require special hardware for every other phone without 3D technology. Chudo is an app that allows you to make animated emoji(animals) but it doesn’t require high-end hardware or device to work.

Magic Unicorn stated during its launch that Chudo can, in fact, run on any virtual device, from your old iPhones, stock Android phones including your iPod Touch.

Chudo Technology

Chudo is an app that recognises the absence of 3D camera tech on your smartphones and therefore only uses a single selfie to build a 3D mesh of your head. The company says that then a further three neural networks examine the image.

The three neural networks all carry out different actions to bring the end product of emoji life on your smartphones. One handles eyebrows, the other matches eye colour while the third draw in glasses if you wear them.

Essentially the app is drawing a box around your eyes and using that to create the 3D avatar of your choice. It’s quite amazing just how little human facial detail is required to give your characteristics to a creature and transform you into a gorilla, unicorn or even a Rhino.

Chudo is quite an interesting AI built an app that can process 60 frames per second, creating smooth motion, recognise tiny microexpressions, and also track tongue position accurately, something not yet available to competing products.

And because the technology works with budget phones it’s also become popular with those who feel excluded by the features usually only found on high-end smartphones.