Emteq is one of a growing number of companies in the field of "affective computing," technology designed to recognize, interpret, process, and/or simulate human emotions. For good or ill, the future is likely to be packed with the stuff.
How do emotion-sensing glasses work?
Credit: EmteqThat's the idea, anyway. Whether any machine can accurately interpret what emotions for everyone through facial muscle movement is a complex question. Research indicates that basic emotions like happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust are expressed facially in similar ways across cultures, but cultural influences and individual differences affect how we display emotions. Some people have poker faces. Some people laugh when they're scared. And anyone can smile when they're feeling blue.
"When we're in a conversation, you want to see my face, I want to see yours. We can react to each other," Strand said. "If you want to do that virtually, you have to know what my face is doing." The idea is that expression-sensing glasses could make avatars and virtual interactions more "real" by putting what's on your real face onto your digital face.
Mental health
A constant monitor of real-life emotions could provide an additional diagnostic tool for mental health professionals, according to Strand. "The gold standard for diagnosing depression right now is a questionnaire," he said. "Not only does that have inherent bias, it's also a sliver in time. How you feel at one moment could differ from how you feel an hour later," but a constant record of emotions would, presumably, be more revelatory of one's mental state.
Healthier eating
Maybe the most concrete application for Sense glasses involves monitoring eating habits. These specs can track chewing patterns, bite frequency, and eating speed—metrics that research links to weight management and digestive health. "You can tell how many chews you had that meal, how many bites, the spacing between your chews and bites," Strand said. Some research has tied the speed of eating to calorie consumption at meals, so in theory micromanaging your chewing could help with weight loss goals, if it doesn't drive you crazy first.
For people struggling with healthy eating or who have medical conditions requiring careful dietary monitoring, this could be useful. But it risks turning every meal into a performance review.
The bigger questions: privacy and humanity
Credit: EmteqIt's probably unfair to pin those big ideas onto a smart glass monitor technology, and Strand says Emteq isn't pursuing the collection and selling of general emotional data. "Our philosophy now is, that's medical grade personal data that doesn't get shared," Strand said. But promises about data handling have a way of "evolving" as companies grow and face financial pressure.
When will Sense glasses be available to the public?
As for when you'll be able to get your own chewing-and-feeling-monitoring specs, the short answer is, in the future, maybe. "Sometime next year, you'd expect us to put something out," Strand said. "We're still debating whether or not we're gonna go straight to consumer. There are lots of different ways to go to market with the tech. And so we're still balancing some of that out."
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