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The Beginning of Affective Computing
Rosalind Picard wrote a preliminary thought piece about the fact that emotion needed to be explored in ways that had not been previously. She decided on the name, "affective computing", to sum up the ideas and research she had conducted because "emotional computing" sounded too subjective. As she slowly began sharing her work with her colleagues, people eventually began to accept her work. -
MIT Media Lab
In 1997, Picard's group researched in the MIT Media Lab. Her group aimed to combine engineering, computer science, psychology, value-centered design and ethics. https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/mit-media-lab -
The Galvactivator
In 1999, the Galvactivator was invented, which sent biofeedback information to users playing a computer game. The glove became brighter when the user's emotions rose due to the conductivity of the user's skin. -
Clippy
Clippy was a Microsoft feature that could detect what the user was doing and frequently offered it's assistance. Though the feature had good intentions, users found Clippy to be annoying as the animated paperclip would appear a little too often. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VdpJ06P01E -
Affectiva
Affectiva is an emotion measurement technology that was conceived in MIT's Media Lab. The software is able to recognize human emotions based on psychological responses and facial cues. -
Emotient
Emotient is a startup that uses artificial intelligence technology to detect people's emotions by analyzing facial expressions. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-emotient-ai-works-2016-1 Something I found interesting in this article was the amount of uses for this product, specifically in the business setting. An example is advertisers using this technology to detect how people feel about their advertisements or new products. -
Future: Self-Driving Cars
I am fully aware that self-driving cars have already been tested, but the product has not entered the market because many of these models contain fatal safety flaws. I truly believe self-driving cars will become the main form of transportation by the time I retire. When/if this happens, I will certainly look back to the early 2000's and view people driving their own cars as a crazy concept. -
Human-like Robots
In 100 years, I believe robots that resemble humans will enter the market. The robots will likely be able to speak and think like humans. It makes me wonder if these robots will replace people who work in the service industry, such as cashiers and waitresses.
