BCS Edinburgh Branch

Affective and Wearable Computing

Rosalind Picard , MIT's Media Lab

Sunday April 11 at 3PM

Royal Museum of Scotland Lecture Theatre
Tickets required from Branch Secretary or Science Festival Box Office


New research is giving computers the ability to recognise, express, and in some cases "have" emotions. The emphasis is on emotional intelligence, which can be more important than traditional mathematical and verbal skills when it comes to interacting successfully with people. This talk will explain recent efforts to enable computers to recognize human expressions of emotion, and to respond appropriately. As shoes, hats, jewellery, spectacles, and other accessories become the sites of a new variety of computing, we obtain a fundamentally different interface than the traditional keyboard and mouse. I will show examples of new "affective wearable computers", including spectacles that communicate expressions such as confusion or interest, and a wearable "StartleCam", a first step towards a personal camera that automatically notices what gets your attention.