Not that robots with emotions are anything new, but a project going on in Europe could perfect the art of crafting mechanical people that can "learn when a person is sad, happy or angry." The Feelix Growing project is getting even more advanced with software that gives robots the power to understand how a person is feeling based on feedback from cameras and sensors. The bots look at a human's facial expression and key in on their voice and proximity to determine what kind of mood they're in. As with the recently announced UMass Mobile Manipulator, this creature too learns from experience, and there's a video explaining just what we mean waiting for you in the read link.

[Via Physorg]

Dutch researchers Theo Gevers and Nicu Sebe, known mostly for their work deciphering the Mona Lisa's smile, have created a face recognition system which can gauge a person's level of happiness. The scientists, working with the multinational goods-manufacturer Unilever, created a face-tracking algorithm which maps video of a subject's face into 3D regions, and then uses those regions to determine their level of pleasure. The tests followed European women's reactions to eating five different foods: vanilla ice cream, chocolate, cereal bars, yogurt and apples. Unsurprisingly, the scientists discovered that women enjoyed eating ice cream and chocolate far more than an apple or yogurt -- the latter even evoking "sad" expressions from 28% of test subjects. Unilever hopes to put the technology to work in creating products such as reduced-fat ice creams which elicit the same response as their full-fat counterparts, while the researchers will be launching a consumer version of the software sometime in August, as well as a website to analyze up to 1,000 user-provided photos daily.

If you couldn't quite make it to the last Wii marriage counseling session, there's still good news coming from Georgia Tech. Thanks to a group of engineering minds at the university, a new augmented reality game (dubbed AR Facade) is placing you in the center of a marital spat with nearly limitless options. The program apparently runs on a back-worn laptop and utilizes an oh-so-tacky head mountable display, and developers suggest that being placed in the midst of an "interactive drama" allows you to choose sides, attempt to mediate, and basically "define your own way to win" as you try to talk some sense into the flustered couple. Interestingly, there's even talk of bringing such games "onto mobile phones" and into the workplace, but it looks like they've got a bit of hardware trimming to do first.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Sure, not everybody needs 15 whole inches of picture frame, but we know your kids are particularly good looking, and could easily fill that much real estate with their shining grins. MediaStreet is offering the new 15-inch eMotion Digital Picture Frame for $298 on June 25th. There's 1024 x 768 pixels to play with, and if you get tired of showing off JPEG and BMP files, there's also support for MPEG, AVI, MP3 and WMA.

While we thought we'd already seen the crown jewel of webcams before, Philips apparently thinks otherwise, as it boasts quite heavily about its new trio of display-mountable cams that were unveiled at Computex. All three devices support background customization and emoticon integration, wide-angle lenses, and face-tracking capabilities. The SPC620 holds down the low-end with a vanilla VGA CMOS sensor and will run you €49.90 ($67), while the SPC1000 includes a directional microphone and noise reduction filter, two-megapixel sensor, and a 5x digital zoom for the very same price. The €99.90 ($135) SPC1300 features Pixel Plus 2 technology seen in the company's Flat TVs, a six-megapixel sensor, audio beaming system, twin directional microphones, and Digital Natural Motion technology that purportedly nixes any frame rate flickers when video chatting. All three webcams should hit shelves in Europe, America, and Asia this August.

[Via TechDigest]

Quite a lot has transpired in the android universe in the past two years, and it's fairly safe to say that Kansei has made a few solid strides during that time as well. A Japanese research team has purportedly crafted a working prototype that can "pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords." According to a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology, the idea of the project is to "create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," and the device relies on 19 movable parts and a silicon face mask in order to work its magic. Developers also noted that speech abilities should be added within a few years, and while we doubt you had to guess, it's quite likely that fully developed Kanseis will one day roam nursing homes as Japan seeks to care for its quickly growing geriatric set.

Nah, MediaStreet can't be considered a pioneer by throwing in Bluetooth functionality with its eMotion digiframe, but considering that only a few others have made such a gesture thus far, you won't find us bellyaching. The firm is upping the ante on its seven-inch widescreen digital photo frame by adding in the ability to instantly transfer photos snapped on your cameraphone or BT-enabled device onto the frame, but didn't forget about the traditional loading methods in the process; users can still import media onto its 256MB of internal memory via SD, CF, SDHC, MMC, MS / MSPro, xD, or USB 2.0. The device plays nice with JPEG / BMP photos, MP3 and WMA on the audio front, and AVI / MPEG1/2/4 when looking at video, and while this may not be the biggest buck on the block, it manages to support a variety of interchangeable wood frames and a wireless remote while ringing up at just $149.

[Via Slashgear]

[Thanks, Eric C.]

Let's face it, not all of us will have the luxury of attending a school where we get to construct massive LEGO machines or learn how to become savvy in SMS, but a developing technology that tracks student emotions could help tutors and distance instructors alike in keeping kids focused while learning. Co-developed by Essex University's Vic Callaghan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Liping Shen, the emotion-tracking tutoring software can analyze physical signs to keep track of a student's attention span, their level of understanding, and even the amount of stress a certain lesson produces. Aimed to help tutors become more effective and to add another layer of "personal" to distance-based education courses, the software would receive information about a student's "heart rate, blood pressure and changes in electrical resistance caused by perspiration" via a sensor-laden, Bluetooth-enabled ring worn on one's finger. The information can then be assessed to determine a student's interest level and frustration level, but a decibel meter to measure snoring isn't likely to be included. If all goes as planned, the team intends on testing the system out in "real learning scenarios in China" to further tweak their creation, so it won't be too long now before an interest-tracking ring will become as necessary as pencil and paper a stylus and a tablet PC come class time.