But How Do You Really Feel? Someday the Computer May Know
From: New York Times - 10/15/2012
By: Karen Weintraub 

Affective computing is an emerging technology that aims to give computers the
ability to read users' emotions. For example, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) researchers are developing glasses designed for people with
Asperger syndrome that can warn them when they are boring someone. The
glasses are equipped with a tiny traffic light, visible only to the user,
which flashes yellow when the conversation is dragging on and red when the
facial cues suggest the listener has completely lost interest. The
researchers also are developing software that maps 24 points on the face to
determine an emotion. The researchers are able to capture the subtleties of
different facial expressions using Webcams with high-frame rates and
resolutions. The software also requires thousands of examples of each facial
expression. "If we don’t have enough examples, across cultures and age
ranges, the machine won’t be able to discriminate these subtle expressions,"
says MIT's Rana el Kaliouby. Affective technology also may be able to help
online education programs provide better learning experiences for students. A
program that distinguishes when students are bored or confused could offer
more challenging problems to the bored students and simpler problems for the
struggling students. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/science/affective-programming-grows-in-effort-to-read-faces.html

Links:
Rana el Kaliouby
http://web.media.mit.edu/~kaliouby/

MindReader API
http://web.media.mit.edu/~kaliouby/API.html

Social Emotional Sensing Toolkit
http://affect.media.mit.edu/projectpages/esp/

Q Sensors
http://www.affectiva.com/q-sensor/