April 19, 2006
ESP: Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthesis
Scientists at MIT's Media Lab are developing a wearable device they say is capable of helping people read the subtlest, most nuanced emotions in another person by tracking the movements of that person's eyebrows, lips, and other facial features.
This technology can be used to help people with autism in their everyday lives. One of the disorders associated with autism is a condition some scientists call ''mind blindness," the inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes and understand that person's emotions. There are about 1 million to 1.5 million Americans with autism, according to the Autism Society of America.
By wearing this device, they could better negotiate the complex map of expressions they encounter on the faces of the people they talk to or meet, possibly helping them keep jobs and make friends.
At a recent conference called Body Sensor Networks 2006 international workshop, two MIT researchers wore tiny cameras mounted on wire rods extending from their chests to demonstrate the Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthetic, or ESP.The video cameras captured facial expressions and head movements, then fed the information to a desktop computer that analyzed the data and gave real-time estimates of the individuals' mental states, in the form of color-coded graphs.
The system's software goes beyond tracking simple emotions like sadness and anger to estimate complex mental states like agreeing, disagreeing, thinking, confused, concentrating and interested. The goal is to put this mental state inference engine on a wearable platform and use it to augment or enhance social interactions,
The ''emotional social intelligence prosthetic" device is the latest in technology that focuses on helping computers read and relay human emotions. But while the technology has traditionally focused on helping machines understand people, now it is being used to help people understand people.
Posted by rsk at April 19, 2006 07:43 AM