Log On To Your Computer By Laughing At It

pshanks writes "New Scientist reports that Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, are using laughter recognition software to track and automatically log staff onto the computer nearest to them as they physically move around a networked building."

Comments

This is the example they used...

[BrookHarty]

For example, the system could be used to follow an executive as they walked through an office, ensuring that their email was always available on the nearest computer.

Thats what blackberry and other PDA's are for. Maybe you havent been in a office lately, but everyone has cubes, with people sitting at the computers. Execs are either in meeting rooms are on the go, not around peoples work spaces. Thats the problem with companies, good products, wrong utilization.

I'd like to see this at a call center with 100 people in a room, all on headseats. Imagine all the people's computers switching around. ;)

Re:This is the example they used...

[AssFace]

Offices are setup that way because of the limits of the computer.

With the ability to use any computer to do any of your work would change the way the office is used, and therefore why it is interested.

Granted, you could do this now just by logging in normally, but the non-computer types of a company aren't going to get it.
They need something they can walk up to and just use - they won't bother with anything more.

To say that something won't ever work or catch on because of the current way you do something is nearsighted.
Should we switch to those new motorized coaches? Hell no! The way we do it now is with horses, and those motorized coaches scare the horses!

Re:This is the example they used...

[Jellybob]

Granted, you could do this now just by logging in normally, but the non-computer types of a company aren't going to get it.
They need something they can walk up to and just use - they won't bother with anything more.

Why won't they get it? You just say to them "you can use your username and password to login at any computer, and use it like the one in your office".

We have people here who've never touched a networked computer in their life before, and they can comprehend the idea of "whichever computer you're sat at, you're files will be at as well".

Re:This is the example they used...

[Jellybob]

Are you sure you're in fact not assigned to an ape training facility?

The people I'm referring to here vary from the technically proficent, to never having touched a mouse in their life (since we're an IT training centre), and they all seem to comprehend the idea that it doesn't matter which computer they sit at.

I dunno, maybe it's that very inexperience that does it... they don't see any reason why they *shouldn't* be able to use any computer.

The very idea makes me laugh

[samjam]

The idea that people should be logged on to a workstation without their knowledge just because they were told a joke round the corner is enough to make me laugh.

Which might not be such a good idea, not so much as it a silly idea.

Logging on should always be a deliberate and considered act.

One small detail.

[RALE007]

If you'll notice towards the end of the article:

"...For the moment, the laughter-recognition software is rather crude and cannot accuratly distinguish between different people..."

Soooo... basically you've come up with this pointless software, which is only interesting due to its novelty (I can't bring myself to say inventiveness), that doesn't work. Stop the presses! This is headline material!!

Would it work? I would guess not.

[AssFace]

Beside the arguements on here that it wouldn't catch on - I think there is a larger issue at hand.

Laughter is a spontaneous thing - not everyone reacts the same way to different stimuli.

As a result, there is true laughter, and then there is a fake laugh. A fake laugh is far different than true laughter.
This system, unless somehow setup with an endless supply of universally funny jokes, would solely rely on fake and forced laughter - which would likely get tiredsome to the users - not to mention be hard to reproduce (whereas I would bet that true real laughter from the same person is frequently very smilar).

It is the same basic priniciple with smiles and the human face. A true smile uses a wide range of the facial muscles and involves the eyes a lot. You can usually tell someone is smiling without even seeing their mouth - you only need to see the top half of their face to know. That is, if it is a genuine smile.
Then there is the fake smile - what we do for photographs. It is entirely different and for the bulk of us, is solely done in the cheek and mouth muscles - therefore it comes across frequently as a pained expression or a sneer.
Politicians and models are usually more successful if their fake smiles look more genuine than "normal" people.

I think they should have a recognition system based on our farts.

The headline oversimplified things

[babbage]

It's not [just] that you can log in by laughing, the system is intended to be more broadly biometric than that. If you actually read the article -- go on, it's short -- laughter is just one of the cues that the system will listen for:

Computer scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, wanted to make it easier for staff to log onto networked computers. So they came up with SoundHunters, a program that recognises someone's voice or laughter and works out which computer is nearest to them. It could then be used to automatically log them on to the computer.

[....]

If the person is moving around the office, the agents can keep track of them by listening to their footsteps. "Once the agents have worked out the direction the person is going, they would even be able to stay one or two steps ahead," says researcher Arkady Zaslavsky. For example, the system could be used to follow an executive as they walked through an office, ensuring that their email was always available on the nearest computer.

So what they're really saying is that this is intended to be a general purpose system for tracking a person's movement around a building, by listening for each individual's voice, footsteps, laughter, and probably other sonic cues.

While that sounds pretty cool -- and is much less silly than the laughing aspect -- it has me wondering what happens when person A is hard at work at her computer, and boss B drops by to check in. Will A get booted & B get logged in? Will B be comfortable with her desktop showing up on random desks as she walks around the office?

Okay, so the people working on this probably aren't stupid -- zany, but not stupid (hey, it is Damian Conway's school... :-). The mere presence of person B at person A's desk shouldn't force a user switch if person A is still sitting there. But the description of the system still leaves open the aspect that, as the article put it, the executive's desktop is going to be racing around the office to keep up with him, gleefully leaping several cubicles ahead in anticipation of where he is about to walk next. Other people are going to be able to trivially eavesdrop on that executive's desk, whether or not they intended to. Sounds risky to me.

As cute as this idea is for some settings (Bill Gate's famed techno-home, for example), I think the corporate office or even a university department isn't the right place for it. As another commenter noted, logging into a machine should always be a deliberate act. Maybe it would be more prudent to replace the auto-logins with a new login screen saying "hello Doctor Falken, would you like to sign in?" At which prompt the user could reply "yes please, Hal" and if the voiceprint matches, he's all set.

Re:I wouldn't want to work there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a tape recorder defeat this "security" ??