MIT Scientists Use Radio Waves To Sense Human Emotions (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: Researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a device that uses radio waves to detect whether someone is happy, sad, angry or excited. The breakthrough makes it easier to accomplish what scientists have tried to do for years with machines: sense human emotions. The researchers believe tracking a person's feelings is a step toward improving their overall emotional well-being. The technology isn't invasive; it works in the background without a person having to do anything, like wearing a device. The device called EQ-Radio, which was detailed in a paper published online Tuesday, resembles a shoebox, as of now. It works by bouncing wireless signals off a person. These signals are impacted by motion, such as breathing and heartbeats. When the heart pumps blood, a force is exerted onto our bodies, and the skin vibrates ever so slightly. After the radio waves are impacted by these vibrations, they return to the device. A computer then analyzes the signals to identify changes in heartbeat and breathing. The researchers demonstrated their system detects emotions on par with an electrocardiogram (EKG), a common wearable device medical professionals use to monitor the human heart. The machine's analysis of the radio waves relies on artificial intelligence, which learns how various heartbeats indicate certain emotions. As a part of the testing, the machine bounced radio waves off actors who recreated a range of emotions. The more emotions the machine experienced, the better it identified what signals, such as a fast heartbeat, gave away their true feelings. By monitoring radio waves reflected off people who are happy, the machine is exposed to certain signs -- such as heart rate or a type of breathing -- associated with being in good spirits.
actors who recreated a range of emotions
their true feelings
Hmm...am I missing something?
The goal wasn't to make computers able to do something that humans can't do, but to make it do something humans can do, but which computers (so far) cannot.
Ultimately this will just be another augment to automated monitoring, for use in any place where there is benefit to knowing people's emotions but a cost associated with having a human watch them all the time.
Ever since I can remember, I had the ability to sense electromagnetic emissions from other people to detect their emotional state. I also had an ability I call "aural telepathy" -- the ability to sense a person's thoughts by tuning in to subtle sensations such as tiny vibrations in the air.
If you are serious then you might want to consider the possibility that you were born with hyper-acuity (sensitivity) to micro body language. People born with this amped up body language awareness at a conscious level can in a sense almost read peoples minds to some degree. Not through psychic like means but just through an autistic-like ability to pattern-match people's micro-body language at a level a speed and accuracy beyond what people normally perceive, or normally only perceive at a subconscious level. Someone born with this can easily end up thinking they have a psychic ability or come up with some other inaccurate explanation for what causes this, because the real ability can be highly accurate, as such it is completely understandable and not due to insanity.
I also have this ability and at the very least can easily tell when people are lying to me. I can also, with a consistently high success rate, predict how people I'm around will react to most things in at least the short term and even to a degree what they may be about to say, which has freaked out a number of people when I would say what they were about to say while looking at them but just before they said it. These days I normally just keep it to myself. Note: The consistent verifiable accuracy of my abilities precludes delusion and this ability is known of in the scientific community.