Posted 11.10.2011 at 12:03 pm
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When You Smile
This Mood Meter display is counting smiles in MIT's Media Lab building.
Susannah F. Locke
The great MIT Mood Meter claims to know all your hopes, dreams and fears. Well, perhaps not. But it can count the number of smiles in a given area, giving some kind of indicator of mood expression.
The Mood Meter came about when a team of researchers at the place from whence all awesome things come, MIT's Media Lab, hooked up a camera and screen (or projector) to some nifty facial recognition algorithms that can spot faces and smiles in real time. And, after assuring campus security that they wouldn't be recording any images, they placed the installations in four different locations across MIT's campus.
See the gallery.
Faces deemed to be smiling are augmented on the screen with a big, cartoon smiley face. Frowning and neutral countenances get an emotionless overlay, instead. The software also estimates how big each person's smile is, on a scale of 0 to 100, and averages the expressions into a happiness barometer rating for the area. It certainly encourages people to try smiling, as you can see in this video.
The researchers think that the tech could be used to help public speakers and comedians better connect with their audiences.
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This electronic mood meter is neat to see!
I had this idea of a good social experiment, where a person wears a ball cap with 2 long projections coming off the bill of the ball cap. At the end of the projection is a camera looking at the owners face. The other camera is looking at what he is seeing.
Record all day and show this to the wearer, later.
See if they are surprise by all the unknowing facial expressions going on by them, they are not even aware of.
Record it in high speed too,
to catch the micro expressions as well.
A person may believe the persons they are speaking to have a negative problem, not realizing they are projecting a ugly negative face to them.
It could be a real eye opener.
We've had an analog 'Fun Meter' for many years while I served in the Navy. Too bad we didn't have this technology back in the 80's!!
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