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Manfred Clynes' Sentograph
Article
This device sensed the pulse of a finger. Clynes realized that each pulse looked different for the subjects. He then had them feel emotions and press down continually until he found distinct patterns for the emotions. These were called sentic forms. This article also discussed how this affected major drug companies and how his work was shut down. -
Facial Action Coding System by Carl-Herman Hjortsjo
This information is discussed on page 55 of the book. FACS was a groundbreaking development because it isolated individual muscle movements when detecting emotion. This allowed devices to recognize each movement as a unique unit to process. This then allowed computers to find similar units of movement and match them with an emotion, leading to the ability to detect emotion using technology. -
Kismet
Article
An interesting part of this article is the way that they described the learning of this robot like teaching an infant to communicate. Kismet was a robot that was designed for social interaction. Kismet was able to move its eyes, eyebrows, and mouth to react and create the display of an emotion. It was planned that this would be improved to be able to also verbally respond to humans. -
MindReader
The book talks about this device on page 60. The MindReader was a pair of glasses. It recorded the wearer's point of view to detect the emotions of those that they were talking to. This device was helpful for those with autism because it gave real-time feedback on how the listener was viewing the conversation. This led to more studies on how technology can be used to help benefit those who were born with disorders. -
iCalm
Article
The iCalm was designed to be worn like a watch. It monitored skin conductance and heart rate to track a user's stress, sleep, and activity. One cool part of this article was that it talked about how much error there was in the data when the subject was moving. I found this interesting because it was partially designed to track physical activity, but worked best at rest. -
Affdex Demonstration
The book talks about this on page 69. This was a big moment because it was an opportunity to gain a lot of funding if it went well. This software was used to analyze viewers' facial expressions as they watched commercials. This helped to predict how the commercials would go over in large areas all over the world. An important part of this demonstration was that the software caught an additional emotion a the very end of the commercial that they did not notice themselves. -
Pepper
Youtube
This video helps to explain Pepper in greater depth. It shows a live interaction with this robot to show the types of conversations that Pepper can have. The video goes on to explain that this type of robot was designed to greet people and answer simple questions. Pepper states that she is originally from Paris. Whenever the robot did not understand a question, it would say "I do not understand" and follow with random words. -
Period: to
Buying Out Others and Patents
The book talks about this time period on pages 75-76. During this time, companies were getting competitive with new innovations. This meant that they were getting patents and buying others out to halt others' progress. This can be harmful in the long run because a lot of progress is usually made through collaboration, and buying others out puts an end to that. -
Jibo
Jibo was designed as the world's first social robot for home settings (Yonck, 86). According to the book, this device could help families by taking pictures and recording messages to make notes. This device could also talk back to family members, which allowed it to read to children and interact with the whole family. This device may have also been helpful for the elderly as it could keep them company. -
Robot Security
In a few years from now, I predict that most security officials will be replaced with robot alternatives. I think that there will still be humans in this field, but I do not think that they will be active in the field, and they will instead control the robots from a secure location. I predict that many robot security officers will be used for important individuals, and it will become normal to have robot security at all hours of the day. -
Robotic Families
In 100 years from now, I predict that human-like robots will be so normal in our world, that we will not be able to differentiate them from normal humans. I think that families who cannot have children will have robot children instead. I predict that some families will have robot children going to school with their real children to protect them. Human-like robot spies will be used to gather data and for missions with the government.