Emotient to Present Emotion Aware Google Glassware at Vision Sciences Society (VSS) 2014

SAN DIEGO, May 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Emotient, the leading provider of facial expression recognition data and analysis, today announced it will demonstrate its emotion-aware Google Glass application at the 12^th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night on May 19, 2014 from 6 - 10 p.m. at Vision Sciences Society 2014 at the TradeWinds Island Resorts, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

The Google Glass application leverages Emotient's core technology to process facial expressions and provides an aggregate emotional read-out, measuring overall sentiment (positive, negative or neutral); primary emotions (joy, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, contempt and anger); and advanced emotions (frustration and confusion). The Emotient software detects and processes anonymous facial expressions of individuals and groups in the Glass wearer's field of view. The emotions are displayed as colored boxes placed around faces that were detected, where the color indicates the automatically recognized emotion.

In addition, two of Emotient's researchers, also affiliated with UC San Diego, together with researchers from the University of Victoria, developed a new version of the Emotion Mirror application, an autism intervention tool that is designed to aid autistic individuals in identifying and mimicking facial expressions in a fun and entertaining way. Emotion Mirror will be used in clinical studies in collaboration with the University of Victoria.

"We are looking forward to sharing our latest emotion-aware software applications at this year's VSS, including our Google Glassware," said Dr. Joshua Susskind, Emotient's Co-Founder, Engineer and Research Scientist, who co-developed the Glass application with Emotient software engineer, Mark Wazny. "We believe there is an opportunity to apply Emotient's facial expression recognition software to enable autism intervention programs on mobile devices, making it easy to deploy and conduct studies in clinical populations."

Collaborator Jim Tanaka, University of Victoria Professor of Psychology, added, "The growing availability of wearables leads us to believe our technology can have a huge positive impact on the autism community and more broadly, the healthcare industry."

The Emotion Mirror application was initially developed in 2010-11 in collaboration between UC San Diego and University of Victoria as an intervention game for improving expression production and perception in kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The new Emotion Mirror application was developed as an HTML5 web application powered by Emotient's Cloud API. In addition to Emotient's Dr. Joshua Susskind, Dr. Marian Bartlett and Morgan Neiman, Emotion Mirror's collaborators include University of Victoria Professor of Psychology, Jim Tanaka and Postdoctoral Researcher, Buyun Xu.

Emotient's Google Glassware is available as a private beta for select partners and customers in retail and healthcare.

About Emotient – Emotion Recognition Technology (www.emotient.com)
Emotient, Inc., is the leading authority in facial expression analysis. Emotient's software translates facial expressions into actionable information, thereby enabling companies to develop emotion-aware technologies and to create new levels of customer engagement, research, and analysis. Emotient's facial expression technology is currently available as an API for Fortune 500 companies within consumer packaged goods, retail, healthcare, education and other industries.

Emotient was founded by a team of six Ph.D.s from the University of California, San Diego, who are the foremost experts in applying machine learning, computer vision and cognitive science to facial behavioral analysis. Its proprietary technology sets the industry standard for accuracy and real-time delivery of facial expression data and analysis. For more information on Emotient, please visit www.emotient.com.

SOURCE Emotient