Social x-ray glasses can decode emotions, make your blind dates less awkward

You may consider yourself a world-class liar, but a new pair of "social x-ray" glasses could soon expose you for the fraud you really are. Originally designed for people suffering from autism, these specs use a rice grain-sized camera to pick up on a person's 24 "feature points" -- facial expressions that convey feelings of confusion, agreement and concentration, among others. Once recognized, these signals are analyzed by software, compared against a database of known expressions and then relayed to users via an attached headphone. If their date starts to feel uncomfortable,

a blinking red light lets them know that it's time to shut up. Rosalina Picard, an electrical engineer who developed the prototype with Rana el Kaliouby, acknowledged that her algorithm still needs some fine tuning, but told New Scientist that the glasses have already proved popular with autistic users, who often have difficulty deciphering others' body language. No word yet on when these social specs could hit the market, but they'll probably make us even more anti-social once they do

The prototype, which Picard says quickly proved popular among people with autism, incorporates a tiny camera that tracks 24 "feature points" on a face to detect micro-expressions--not only by type but also by frequency and length. The resulting data is then compared with a database to identify six general facial states: thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested, confused, and disagreeing.

Picard and colleague Rana el Kaliouby have founded a company called Affectiva to sell their expression recognition software and continue to fine-tune the algorithm. The company is also in talks with a Japanese firm that wants to use the software to distinguish between 10 different types of smiles on Japanese faces, including bakushu (happy smile), shisho (inappropriate giggle), and terawari (acutely embarrassed smile).
In the event that expression-reading glasses become mainstream, I offer one prediction: those of us who are shy about being read like open books will rely increasingly on that oh-so-simple art of texting--replete, of course, with emoticons.

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CNET New Scientist

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