Computer will sense what the viewer feels

An innovative method of studying emotions has been created by engineers Krzysztof Cywiński and Dariusz Kamowski and psychologist Konrad Bocian who together form a research and development team Quantum Lab Poland. 50 thousand euros grant from the EU\'s Horizon 2020 will allow them to develop the technology Xpress Engine, which allows to monitor changes in the intensity of human emotions by analysing facial expressions in real time.

"Using the algorithms we have developed, first we teach our program face detection, because it is an element required for further analysis. Once the program finds a face, it starts to analyse the changes that occur on it, namely the degree of muscle tone and facial expressions. On this basis, it attempts to determine the probability that the face expresses certain emotion" - explained Konrad Bocian.

Almost everywhere in the world, regardless of culture, six basic emotions are recognized and expressed in the same way. "We have taught the program these six emotions. We started with a smile, because it was the easiest" - explained Bocian.

The researchers showed their program a thousand photos of smiling faces to teach it what such face looks like. In the case of the smile, the program only has to register the muscle lifting the corners of the mouth and the muscle surrounding the eye. "Now our system knows that if one of these two muscles lifts, it is most likely a smile" - described the researcher.

The program responsible for the recognition of emotions is called Xpress Engine. The researchers prepared a research platform for it - the system ELLEN. The only tools needed to use it are access to the Internet and a basic camera, for example in a laptop. In the beginning, the system will be intended for market research companies, marketing agencies and individual brands and advertising companies.

"We have a comprehensive product that recognizes emotions and presents study results. A company contacting us through the ELLEN platform uploads the material that they wants to test, for example ads. After a brief training - how to set a camera, what lighting should be used - a consumer opens the link we send and watches the material. Recordings are sent to our servers, Xpress Engine analyses them and sends finished results to the platform. In this way, you can see that, for example, in 20th second of the film 70 percent test viewers smiled" - described Konrad Bocian.

This system offers a more efficient and less expensive method of measuring consumer engagement than currently used eye-tracking. The mere fact of looking at advertising does not have to mean that the consumer is interested.

Quantum Lab Poland is the only Polish company that has developed and commercialised this technology. There are two more in the world. "The difference is that those companies come from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology and have big budgets. We have developed the same product in two years with much less funding" - the researcher noted.

Quantum Lab Poland is one of the three Polish companies that have qualified for the first round of funding in Horizon 2020 programme for small and medium-sized enterprises. "With the grant we will be able to expand the tool for applications in areas such as medicine, psychotherapy and social robotics, the aim of which is to build personal robots capable of analysing the emotional states of people" - added Bocian.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland, Ewelina Krajczyńska

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