3D Social Research (“3DSR”) is a collaborative computer vision project with Yoav Goldstein and Nicolas Legewie. We combine 3D video with the OpenPose algorithm to analyze social interactions. Below is a scripted interaction and an associated GIF of the absolute locations of the interaction’s participants in space from a “bird’s eye view”, extracted using 3DSR.

3DSR enables the precise measurement of individuals’ discrete body parts over the course of an interaction. As such, it is a novel technique for measuring the absolute locations, relative locations, and relative distances of individuals’ heads, hands, hips, and other body parts. Moreover, as a computational technique, 3DSR can provide these measurements for large video corpora, facilitating the comparison of individuals’ physical behavior across space and time. 3DSR can help social scientists answer key questions in fields like interaction in public space, gender and sexuality, and embodiment.