emotional

BERLIN -- Huawei detailed its Android plans today, showing a half-dozen devices going on sale in October, a reworked version of the Android interface, and more of its ambition to grow into a company that regular people recognize.

"We are changing from an ODM [original design manufacturer] to a company trying to build our own brand, and we understand the importance of innovation," said Dennis Poon, who as Huawei's global user interface design director is on the front lines of some of that innovation. At the IFA consumer-electronics show here, he showed off version 1.0 of … Read more

Life in cyberspace turns out to be about as complicated as real life.

The Pew Research Center today released a report that documents the social and emotional climate for American adults on social-networking sites. For the most part, that climate is a positive one, the survey found.

Pew says the report is the result of a survey on Americans' use of the Internet. The survey was done via telephone interview on both landlines and cell phones last year from July 25 to August 26, with 2,260 adults, age 18 or older, participating.

According to the report, 85 percent of social-network-using adults deduced from social media that people are mostly kind, while at the same time almost half of them said they have seen mean or cruel behavior displayed by others at least occasionally.… Read more

Your hairdresser knows everything about you. So does your shrink. Soon it could be your PlayStation. Sony executives are apparently looking to give game consoles abilities that go far beyond tracking your movements.

During a panel discussion on the next 10 years of gaming at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, last week, the executives described the possibility of consoles that track players' emotions. According to a transcript posted on Develop, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida said that within 10 years games will be able to offer "almost dangerous kinds of interactivity" with players.

A second participant, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Worldwide Studios Europe Vice President Mick Hocking, said cameras are capable of recording a player's biometric data and tracking where the player is looking. He elaborated on how Sony might be able to use this data. According to the transcript:… Read more

Dr. Cal Lightman is about to be out of a job. The micro-expression expert central to the TV show Lie to Me could soon be joined by legions of fellow human lie detectors--but instead of squinting intently Lightman-style, they'll be wearing high-tech specs.

So hopes electrical engineer Rosalind Picard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, who recently shared a pair with journalist Sally Adee for the magazine New Scientist.

In her interview, Adee describes the sensation of wearing the glasses, which featured a blinking red light alerting her to the general confusion and utter boredom of … Read more

A Cambridge University professor is developing a navigation system that does what most boyfriends can't: read your emotions, sense what's going on, and adapt to the situation.

Just kidding about the boyfriend part.

Charles is a robot that is more co-pilot than GPS device. Frustrated by unintuitive gadgets that aren't helpful--let alone interactive--Professor Peter Robinson, who leads the Rainbow Group working on computer graphics and interaction at Cambridge, developed an emotionally intelligent navigation system that can tell how you're feeling and respond accordingly.

The system uses sensors and algorithms of predefined mental states to track facial cues, tone of voice, body language, and posture. Using this information, Charles can read human emotion with a 70 percent accuracy rate, which is on par with human ability, Robinson says in a YouTube video demonstrating his project.

But reading emotion is only one aspect of the robot's capability. Charles can also respond with human-like emotion.

With cameras for eyes and 24 motors for muscles, the robot's head and mouth moves as it gives directions and mimics human expressions. Unlike current GPS systems, Charles politely tells you where to go based on conversation. Should you not agree with the directions Charles provides, you can suggest an alternate route. Instead of saying it's recalculating or insisting on the programmed route, the robot actually agrees with your decision. … Read more

For all those who believe the computing industry is populated by people who are out of touch with the world of emotion, it's time to think again.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which standardizes many Web technologies, is working on formalizing emotional states in a way that computers can handle. The name of the specification, which in July reached second-draft status, is Emotion Markup Language.

That might sound alien to the cold calculating ways of a computer. Let's face it, compared with most computer interaction, HAL 9000 sounded positively genial in "2001: A Space Odyssey" … Read more

There are times, I am sure, when you believe your car is talking to you. Your lawn mower too, no doubt. These machines sometimes groan and squeal as if to say "Ease up, big boy" or "Honey, I have a headache."

I have to tell you, though, that these messages are all in your mind. Machines do not have feelings. They will never truly love you.

Well, all except one. A bike called Precious.

Precious has been fitted with all sorts of clever sensors that reveal the bike's thoughts and feelings at any given moment. As Precious rides along, the sensors send the average of their readings by text message back to servers that analyze the true emotional soul of this extraordinary machine.

This analysis leads, it being the modern world, to tweets at Twitter.com/yesiamprecious. Did I mention that Precious is currently on a 3-month journey from the East Coast of America to the West, in aid of Livestrong? Well, I should have, because it makes for some fascinating understanding of how a machine's brain and emotions really work.… Read more

If you can't determine the emotional states expressed by this virtual robot, chances are you might be an older adult, according to a study by Georgia Tech.

You might also have trouble serving our future robot overlords. But I digress.

In a rather strange study, researchers in the school's Human Factors and Aging Laboratory tested people's ability to gauge the emotional state of a robot by presenting them with a virtual feline displaying seven emotional states at various levels of intensity: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and neutrality.

The groups consisted of adults between the ages … Read more

MB Biorhythm Chart Software lets users view their biorhythm charts over a 28-day period. Whether the charts have any validity, we can't say, but the program does perform as described.

As with other programs from Mystic Board, Biorhythm Chart's first screen is a jumble of advertisements from Mystic Board, and it's not entirely obvious how to continue. Once on the second screen, users enter their birth date and the date that's in the middle of the time period they wish to analyze. The program then provides a chart with three different-colored parabolas representing physical, intellectual, and … Read more