Jun 26 2006
Robot Mind Readers
This is just too good to pass-up. Apparently robots are being developed that can determine our emotional state by analyzing our facial expressions. Check-out Playfuls.com:
The visitors of the next week’s Royal Society summer science exhibition are to participate at a “live†experiment, where computers are to read their emotional status, by analyzing their facial expressions.
A commercial application for this type of robots could be the smart advertisement system: a robot will play certain ads depending on the mood of the passer-by. If someone feels gloomy and expresses that in exterior the robot analyzes the facial features and decides it’s time for some happy holydays… “Our research could enable websites to tailor advertising or products to your mood,” Peter Robinson, professor of computer technology at the University of Cambridge said.
“For example, a web cam linked with our software could process your image, encode the correct emotional state and transmit information to a website.”
As for those who suffer from autism or the Aspberger’s syndrome the technology can help them interpret other’s facial expression. Actually the developers are working with American colleagues to build a headset for those emotionally disabilitated, which will allow them to understand what others are communicating through facial movements.
When you consider what Regine Debatty has to say on children bonding with robots and we could be in for an interesting future.
An experiment started last year by Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories and a nursery school in San Diego is revealing that children can develop emotions toward robots, leading to new commercial possibilities as machines become smarter and friendlier.
“We adults tend to ask children if it is a toy or a human being, but they are free of such established categorisation,” explains esearcher Fumihide Tanaka who has been working on the project with Machine Perception Laboratory. “If intelligent-machine technology is successfully developed, a century later people will see the concept just as commonsense. This is natural as we are living in a different era now.”
I wonder if they have one of these that works on spouses…
