Computers that understand how you feel
Computers that understand how you feel
Steve Jones
02 Feb 2010
Robots can now pick up the mood of their users, and can even tell if they’re drunk…
Now, computers can sense the mood of their users. Already they are able to identify smiles and frowns and even blushes (a subject of much interest to Darwin, who devotes many pages to it). Their programs generate well over a million combinations of facial expressions and head position and, on a good day (or with an expressive face) can. nine times out of ten, correctly identify looks of fear, sadness, happiness, anger disgust and surprise. They even do better than humans in differentiating the expression of a puzzled person from that of a drunk.
However, most of the research is based on actors making faces at a camera. Even simple computers can tell such faked expressions from real ones (which could be useful to policemen, bank managers and parliamentary enquiries). The real world, with expressions changing ever few seconds, is harder to analyse. Tiredness and pain can sometimes be picked up and there is much interest in training the machines to respond to expressions of distress or confusion in the elderly or the mentally impaired
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