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THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside The spices CAMPUS • Saudi Falcons driver Faisal of life Binladen visits ACS Doha International School P | 4 P | 7 HERITAGE • Souq Waqif: A market for all trades P | 6 Wireless device to FILM • Dogged on disarmament, actor Michael Douglas monitor emotional earns Unicef award ups and downs P | 8-9 HEALTH • Programme may help diabetics prevent plunging blood sugar P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Wristband that tracks your child’s every move via GPS unveiled P | 12 Researchers are working Learn Arabic on machines that could • Learn commonly detect and help us cope used Arabic words and their meanings with our sometimes Cover picture shows “Mood Wings,” a butterfly-shaped set of wires attached to a sensor and worn on a wristband, beat at hidden emotions. different rates depending on the wearer’s stress level. P | 13 2 PLUS | THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2014 COVER STORY New devices can sense your mood and tell others By Arthur Allen laboratory of Rosalind Picard Czerwinski is taking the at the Massachusetts Institute technology in other direc- ognitive psy- of Technology. Picard and her tions. One is to create ways chologist Mary colleagues dreamed of creat- for people with less dramatic Czerwinski and ing caring robots. As a first mental conditions to monitor her friend were step, they decided to make stress in everyday life. The having a vigorous machines that could detect projects she has developed Cargument as they drove to and help us cope with our with her colleagues, includ- Vancouver, British Columbia, sometimes hidden emotions. ing Microsoft senior research from Seattle, where she works One of Picard’s early designer Asta Roseway, at Microsoft Research. She projects involved helping include a butterfly-shaped set can’t remember the subject, autistic children. Because of wires attached to a sen- but she does recall that sud- her devices were often better sor wristband. The “Mood denly, his phone went off, and than the children themselves Wings” beat at different rates he read out the text message: at communicating their feel- depending on the wearer’s “Your friend Mary isn’t feelings, she designed ways of stress. The developers also ing well. You might want to feeding information from made a jacket that resem- give her a call.” a wrist sensor to the cell- bles a chain-mail vest whose At the time, Czerwinski phones of parents and other bendable, wired “leaves” use was wearing on her wrist a caretakers so they could know 40 motors to flap when the wireless device intended to about the stress their chil- wearer is happy. To show monitor her emotional ups dren were under and respond stress, similar motors on the and downs. Similar to the accordingly. back of the vest literally raise technology used in lie detec- “The sensors have pro- its hackles. Another of their tor tests, it interprets signals vided data that has allowed inventions is a fabric device such as heart rate and elec- people to see things that that hangs on the wall; it trical changes in the skin. they were guessing about, turns crimson and sets off a The argument may have and often guessing wrong,” fan when it picks up stress been trivial, but Czerwinski’s Picard says. For example, an from a user’s wrist sensor. internal response was not. autistic child might be lying While these gadgets are That prompted the device to on the floor looking lethargic, prototypes that probably send a distress message to her but the signal from his wrist won’t go beyond the novelty cellphone, which broadcast it sensor shows that he’s very stage, they represent the to a network of her friends. tense. He’s probably lying on kind of machines that, by Including the one with whom the floor to ease the tension. helping people become more she was arguing, right beside “A teacher might not under- tuned in to their emotions, A jacket that resembles a chain-mail her. stand this and say, ‘Get off could allow them to be more vest has bendable, wired “leaves” that Czerwinski is working in the floor and back to your self-aware and develop strat- flap when the wearer is happy. affective computing, which desk.’ The signal allows the egies to improve their lives, emerged in 2000 from the child to be better understood. Czerwinski says. PLUS | THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2014 3 “Some people say, ‘Why would I want Microsoft cognitive psychologist you to know how what I’m feeling?’” Mary Czerwinski, left, and senior she says. “But there are audiences that research designer Asta Roseway could benefit because they have com- are creating devices that help read munication gaps. Autistic kids could a person’s emotions. benefit from fabrics that show feelings. Or in PTSD — could we warn fam- ily members that there’s going to be an eruption? Something as fanciful as these devices could expose that.” Czerwinski and her colleagues have developed a way to help parents of children with attention-deficit hyperactiv- ity disorder respond constructively to their children’s difficulties. A parent wears a wrist sensor while caring for the child. Via a wireless computer system, the sensor relays signals of parental stress to a network. In reply, the network sends text messages to the parent’s cellphone that suggest helpful behaviours or messages. These are “standard things like ‘Maybe you should take a walk,’ ‘Try some deep breaths,’ ‘Try not to shout’ — the kind you find in parent- ing books,” Czerwinski says. “But most she expected her stress to peak on a of the immodesty of a body lotion ad in director of informatics at the Oregon parents aren’t looking in those books roller coaster. In fact, the peak hit at which a husband put his hand on his Health Sciences University in Portland, when they reach the end of the tether. her house in the morning, when a hitch wife’s midriff. But the women’s facial recently heard Czerwinski speak about This can provide help at the instant came up and she was afraid she’d have expressions while the ad screened sug- affective technology but was not con- it’s required.” to cancel the party. “You want so badly gested they liked it. The company went vinced the measurements would be of Although one can easily imagine to succeed and make your child happy,” ahead and ran the ad. any particular therapeutic use. a frustrated parent slamming her she says. “It reflects a deep-seated con- Czerwinski’s machines are not gen- Not all stress is bad, he pointed intrusive cellphone against the wall, cern we have about situations that are iuses at figuring out how to make out, and he wasn’t eager to have yet Czerwinski says that, when tested, the out of our control.” you feel better. The interventions another technological fix for a human system helped parents use the right Picard and an MIT colleague, Rana are the same that cognitive psychol- problem. “I’m one of those people who approach with their kids. Al Kaliouby, created a company, ogy has offered for decades: Go take is already wedded to technology, and A more elaborate system that Affectiva, that marketed the wrist a walk. Stretch, take a deep breath, the thought of being wedded to it Czerwinski’s team has tested tracks a sensors for a few years before shelv- call a friend, play some music or a another way seems intrusive,” he said. person during a day at the office using ing them in favour of a second system video game. The objective, Czerwinski The people developing affective a wristband and chair sensors, facial they invented, which uses cameras to says, is to increase mindfulness, or devices empathise with some of this. recognition technology, voice recorders identify emotional states such as sur- awareness of how we feel in particular “We all have the same uncomfort- that are said to detect state of mind prise, dislike and embarrassment using circumstances. able feeling that we’re headed into and GPS data. It maps out the user’s fleeting scans of the face. The MIT William R Hersh, a physician and this frontier where things are going levels of excitement, stress and anger scientists have recorded more than a to know more about us than we’re throughout the day with colour- and billion expressions from thousands of comfortable with,” Roseway says. “We shape-coded blobs on a monitor. people and fed them into a computer feel this in our guts, but what does it “You don’t need this system to algorithm that gradually grew adept A more elaborate mean? Part of our work is to try to remember a real trauma, but [it iden- at interpreting a given expression on system that make sense of where we’re headed, so tifies] the micro-patterns of badness in anyone’s face. we can share some solid learning about your day that you don’t know are hap- Picard said marketing companies Czerwinski’s team it. We’re like everyone else, riding the pening but may put you in a bad mood. have jumped at this technology, which has tested tracks waves and seeing where we’re going.” Maybe there’s a person in your life who they use to detect nonverbal signals Like it or not, the technology is com- makes you sad or angry or bored. Over from consumers, either in focus groups a person during a ing at us, she says: “In the future, we a year, more critical patterns could be or via webcams.

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