Emotient Selected As A Finalist In 26th Annual Connect Most Innovative New Product Awards

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Emotient, the leading authority in automated facial expression analysis, announced today that its FACET® technology has been selected as a finalist in the software category for the 2013 Most Innovative New Product Awards, sponsored by CONNECT.  CONNECT, a regional program that catalyzes the creation of innovative technology and life sciences products in San Diego County, continues its twenty-six year tradition of honoring San Diego's leaders of innovation and groundbreaking new products with the annual award.

"Emotient is leading a revolution in effortless human-technology interaction," said Ken Denman, CEO, Emotient. "Our emotion recognition technology is the result of more than 20 years of pioneering research and development by a team of experts in machine learning, cognitive science and computer vision. We are honored that FACET is being considered by CONNECT for such a prestigious award."

Emotient's FACET technology enables automated facial expression recognition and analysis. The company's patented technology uses machine-learning methods to continuously improve as it processes large datasets to achieve optimal accuracy, speed and robustness. The system is dramatically improved by datasets that have been developed in collaboration with the foremost experts in behavioral science. By inputting the highest quality data into its system, Emotient is setting the bar for the industry's most accurate and reliable emotion detection system. 

The CONNECT Most Innovative New Product Awards ceremony, to be held at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines on Dec. 6, will honor product innovation in the following categories: Aerospace & Security Technologies, Communications & IT, Hardware & General Technology, Life Sciences – Diagnostics & Research Tools, Life Sciences – Medical Products, Mobile Apps, Software, Sport & Active Lifestyle Technologies and Sustainability.

"This year's finalists are among the strongest we've seen," said Tyler Orion, interim president, CONNECT. "In the 26 years we've produced the MIP Awards, we've seen San Diego County continue to produce impressive technology innovation across a broad range of industries, and selecting winners from among this year's group of finalists will be an exciting challenge."

The 2013 Most Innovative New Product Awards receive generous support from lead sponsors Life Technologies and Qualcomm, as well as supporting sponsors including AmericanWest Bank, Barney & Barney, Cox, Cymer, D&K Engineering, Hughes Marino, Kaiser Permanente, Knobbe Martens, Merck and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For the complete list of winners and other information please visit the Most Innovative New Product Awards website.

About Emotient – Facial Expression Recognition System (www.emotient.com)
Emotient is the leading authority in facial expression analysis.  Emotient's flagship products are the FACET® SDK, a high-accuracy, cost effective and adaptive software development kit, and FACET® Vision, a fully featured desktop application for automated facial expression analysis and video annotation. Emotient's technology translates facial expressions into actionable information, thereby enabling a broad array of companies to develop emotion aware technologies and to create new levels of customer engagement, research and analysis.

Founded by the foremost experts in the development of machine learning for facial behavioral analysis that include Marian Bartlett Ph.D., Ian Fasel Ph.D., Gwen Littlewort, Ph.D., and Javier R. Movellan Ph.D., our proprietary technology sets the industry standard for accuracy and real-time delivery of facial expression data and analysis.

Emotient began at the Machine Perception Lab at University of California, San Diego, achieving early market validation with the co-development of the Sony Smile Shutter, a commercial camera application that detects smiles and captures photos at the precise moment a subject or group of subjects' smile. Emotient's founding team also worked with many leading government agencies in honing the applicability of the technology for safety and national security purposes.

For more information on Emotient, please visit www.emotient.com.

About CONNECT
CONNECT is a regional program that catalyzes the creation of innovative technology and life sciences products in San Diego County by creating an environment in which inventors and entrepreneurs have access to the resources they need for success. Since 1985, CONNECT has assisted in the formation and development of more than 3,000 companies and is now widely regarded as one of the world's most successful organizations linking inventors and entrepreneurs with the resources they need for commercialization of innovative products. As a result, the program has been modeled in more than 50 regions around the world – most recently in New York City, Bogota, Colombia and Saudi Arabia. To learn more about CONNECT, please visit www.connect.org or call 858.964.1300.

SOURCE Emotient