Buddy-BeWell
VicarVision is proud to have received a Eurostars grant to develop a truly empathic robot. Buddy, developed by Blue Frog Robotics is a friendly emotional personal robot that can watch over elder users and help with daily activities. In order to be a real companion, Buddy must also understand the user. This means the Buddy will be updated to enable computer vision analysis to analyse emotions and physiological signals from the face, body, and voice. Learning these important emotional signals can help integrate a successful health coaching program. This will help help older people to remain healthy.
AI4SFS
VicarVision is cooperating in this very interesting ELSA lab. ELSA labs are an initiative of the NL AI Coalition, and aim to research ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA) in the design of AI Applications. Artificial Intelligence is an important driver of the transition towards circular and Sustainable Food Systems (SFS). The goal of AI4SFS is to create an ELSA laboratory to test and develop responsible and trustworthy AI for the Sustainable Food Systems of the future.
MORSE
We have received funding from the Dutch regional MIT programme for a very interesting AI human factors project. Primary goals of human factors analysis are measuring cognitive and emotional load on human operators, and to improve human performance. The aim of this project is to create an advanced simulation and training system measuring key human factors. It will be primarily applied to the maritime sector, but also applicable to other industries such as aviation and automotive. By developing new digital technologies we can help maintain an efficient and safe maritime sector.
BabySensor
VicarVision is very excited to be part of the Eurostars BabySensor-pre project. BabySensor’s mission is to provide access to contactless health monitoring to both parents and healthcare professionals to protect premature/vulnerable babies. This will increase the quality of life for parents of vulnerable infants and increase health and care services for babies. The project builds upon Norwegian company Babysensor’s proprietary sensor technology to develop a novel hospital-grade, camera-based product that detects health vitals through contactless imaging alone.
Past Research Projects
AID2BeWell
VicarVision was rewarded a grant from the Active and Assisted Living Programme to promote healthy aging. In this greying society leveraging technology to support active and healthy aging to reduce the risk of (mental) health problems is challenging but promising. We will develop our emotion analysis software to function on a robot platform. The goal of the robot platform is to deliver adaptive personal behaviour change suggestions that promote well-being.
VITE-A2
To promote human-centered AI for the public sector, the Dutch government launched a new SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) call. VicarVision was one of the companies selected for a 4-month feasibility study. We will investigate the potential of video and text AI analysis to increase understanding of political council meetings. Our project aims to bridge the gap between government and citizens and increase participation in society.
EyeReader
VicarVision and Noldus have received funding from the Dutch local government for this ICT-high tech project. We will develop a ground-breaking system for tracking eye movements using a simple webcam. In combination with our existing products, this will enable us to offer the world’s most advanced solution for measuring the experience of someone using a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
CAS
Citius, Altius, Sanius (faster, higher, healthier) or in short CAS, is a collaborative research program to stimulate people of all performance levels to engage in healthy physical activity. With the help of information from unobtrusive sensor and data science techniques, people will be motivated to improve their performance and prevent injuries during sports and fitness. VicarVision is contributing in the project by analyzing physiological signals from camera images.
NESTOR
NESTOR, a consortium funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research for Applied and Engineering Sciences, aims to develop a revolutionary method to control brain activity and restore visual function in blind people. The aim is to develop a prosthetic that allows blind people to use their eyesight again.
H2A2
VicarVision has been awarded funding from INNOLABS, an EU project that aims to foster collaboration and opportunities among SMEs from different countries and sectors in order to develop disruptive technologies mainly related to mHealth, personalized healthcare and ageing populations. In this project, we will set first steps in creating an unobtrusive health monitoring tool that can assess heart rate and emotions from the face, while someone is using a smart-phone.
R3D3
Inspired by Star Wars’ R2D2, we are developing an even more advanced robot. R3D3 takes the form of a receptionist robot that can have an intelligent dialogue with the visitors of a museum, shop or office building. The R3D3 project addresses scientific ICT challenges in the areas of computer vision, spoken language interaction, and data processing.
VER
In this project, VicarVision, Noldus IT and NIZO food research are developing an innovative method for measuring emotions while people are eating. There is a lot of research that tries to find out which consumer products are the most successful. This project combines state-of-the-art measurement systems together with virtual and real-life situations to make optimal estimations of product appreciation.
Brainview
As part of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN called Brainview, VicarVision is developing Baby FaceReader, a state of the art system to automatically detect infant facial expressions. Together with university and industry partners across Europe, Baby FaceReader will be used to address questions in developmental psychology related to affect and developmental disorders such as ASD.
Empathic Products
The success or failure of applications and services is greatly determined by User Experience (UX). While careful UX design has proven beneficial, it is surprising how few efforts have been made to measure and respond to user experience after deploying the application.
CONCORT
As part of CONCORT, VicarVision will expolore whether emotion regulation is at the core of consumer competence. The project explores uses cases for FaceReader, VicarVision’s state-of-the-art system to automatically code adult faces as well as improving and expanding the capabilities of that system