It’s getting easier and easier to add machine intelligence to your hacks, even to the point where you sometimes don’t have to install any special software. In this case [Dexter Industries] has added the ability to read human emotions to their EmpathyBot robot by making use of Google Cloud Vision.
Press a button on the robot and it moves forward until it’s a certain distance from an object. It then takes a picture and sends it off to Google Cloud Vision along with a request to do face detection. The response that Google returns is in JSON format and, if it finds a face, includes the likelihood of the face being happy, sad, sorrowful or surprised. The robot parses that response and gives an appropriate canned speech using the text-to-speech software, eSpeak e.g. “You seem happy! Tell me why you are so happy!”.
[Dexter] has made the source code available on github. It’s written in python and is easy to read by anyone with even just a little programming experience. The video after the break gives a number of demonstrations, including some with non-human subjects.
On their webpage, [Dexter Industries] also gives a little further analysis. For example, one subject had facial hair which gave Google difficulty with interpreting the emotion. But after some trimming, interpretation improved. It did have difficulty with a baby though, possibly due to chubby cheeks.
We recently saw other examples of hacks using machine intelligence software. [Dexter] has used Google Cloud Vision before for sorting candy. And before that it was Google’s Tensorflow being used by a robot to recognize and say the names of objects around a garage.
Poor robot. One of these days it’s owner will be a sociopath.
Somewhere there’s a 25″ Tube TV sobbing it’s heart out in a landfill after the 3 children it brought up, cast it aside for a 46″ Plasma
Easiest job ever!
“Robot, what do I feel?”
(robotic voice) “Not much.”
I’m weary of connecting more things to the internet but it’s a neat concept. :)
I’ll be more worried when they stop degrading to the worst of 4chan in less than 24 hours.
Who’s the short guy in the pic?
I only require a device that reads Awkward sexual tension
After the last 3 attempts I did at getting something sensible from webpages showcasing Google AI I have little trust left in Google’s prowess at tackling that subject.
And I’m pretty happy about that, the last thing I want is capable AI from Google, since that will be used against everybody of course.