Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It From: Wired News - 01/01/2003 By: Louise Knapp A research team at Vanderbilt University's Department of Mechanical Engineering is developing a robot equipped with sensors that are used to determine people's emotions by picking up physiological cues. The machine is designed to approach a person and offer assistance when it discerns that the person is in distress. The scientists believe the robot will be well-suited to perform as an assistant for military personnel under battlefield conditions, although getting people to accept it will be a major challenge. The robot can record a person's heartbeat with an electrocardiogram, notice fluctuations in perspiration via a skin sensor, measure blood pressure, identify muscular stress in the brow and jaw with an electromyography detector, and read temperature. Algorithms are used to translate these readings into a format that the robot can comprehend, explains Vanderbilt researcher Nilanjan Sarkar. He adds that this data can be processed in real time. Office of Naval Research (ONR) corporate communications officer John Petrik says that his organization, which co-sponsors the Vanderbilt project, thinks military robot aides could become smarter thanks to the researchers' work. However, Carnegie Mellon University's Takeo Kanade cautions that "we are at a very primitive stage of understanding the relation between the internal states - what is observable - and human emotion." http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56921,00.html