Curtin student’s innovation capable of ‘reading’ human emotions

A Curtin University mechatronic engineering student has developed an intelligent system capable of reading people’s emotions in real-time, offering potential benefits for national security and health authorities.

Final-year student Jordan Vice, aged 22, created the system using three artificial intelligence algorithms that assess emotional reactions via the monitoring of real-time video footage.

Mr Vice, who is set to graduate next year, was invited to present his work to The First IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence, held in Los Angeles this month.

He said his system, developed under the supervision of Dr Masood Khan, from Curtin’s School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, classified human emotions through facial and speech cues.

“At any time, the system displays the amount of neutral, happy, sad, angry, frightened, surprised or disgusted feelings observed in real-time to help the relevant authorities to make the best decision and take the appropriate action,” Mr Vice said.

“The system, which can be mounted on a small artificial intelligence board of 10cm by 10cm and 6 to 8cm in height, is capable of wirelessly communicating the required data to the relevant staff tasked with making high-level decisions, including at border crossing points or a psychological assessment.”

Dr Khan said he was impressed with Mr Vice’s undergraduate work, adding he had been offered a PhD scholarship to continue his cognitive and machine intelligence research at Curtin.

“This system is light-weight, low-cost and small, as well as being easily uploaded to any desktop computer or laptop that is equipped with a web camera,” Dr Khan said.

“Jordan’s work is a fine example of the high-quality work being undertaken by our undergraduate mechanical and mechatronic engineering students in their final year of studies at Curtin and I look forward to seeing his continuing success throughout his career.”

For more information about the IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence, visit here.