What is the perfect cookie? How do you decide this? Many research groups use FaceReader to investigate emotions during eating and drinking behaviour (see an example here). Generally, there are some correlations between different measures of hedonic liking (or disliking) and facial expressions. Benefits of using facial expression analysis to measure responses towards food products are that you can measure emotions automatically, and during the event (instead of having to ask afterwards). There are also some difficulties; most importantly, food causes an occlusion in front of the face. In the Virtual Emotion Reader project, the goal of VicarVision, Noldus IT and NIZO food research was to create a better measurement of emotion whilst eating. The partners in the project performed an online validation experiment where people ate cookies in front of the camera.

In many futuristic movies, you see robots performing countless day-to-day tasks. Well… the future is here (almost)! For a project funded by COMMIT, we helped create a robot receptionist, named R3D3 (Rolling Receptionist Robot with Double Dutch Dialogue). The aim of this project was to create a combination of a virtual human and a robot capable of verbal and non-verbal interactions with humans. Together with University of Twente’s HMI and RAM, we succeeded in building a robot platform with the technical capacities to realize such interactions.

The R3D3 prototype can drive around, adjust its height, and carries a tablet with a virtual human face. The robot includes technology for speech recognition and speech production, and has FaceReader based computer vision techniques that can recognize gender, age and emotions. In addition, the virtual avatar on the tablet can interact with people. Here we report the results of three pilot studies, carried out to evaluate the performance of the robot and investigate how people reacted to it. Each pilot tested a different target population; shop visitors, police personnel, and children.

A few weeks ago, VicarVision crossed the Atlantic and got to show its first validation results for Baby FaceReader at the Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium.

Have you ever wondered what your baby is thinking or feeling? Baby FaceReader automatically measures facial expressions in infants (0-2 years old) to determine just that! The widely used FaceReader software can currently only be used for children from the age of three. VicarVision has been developing Baby FaceReader as part of the Brainview Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Training Network. We are proud to share its first promising validation results!

^{Example of a child where a few activated action units are scored.}

We finished our project for UpWorthy to develop an empathy calculator in New York City!
For a demo click the image below!