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Emospark is an emotionally-aware AI console for the home

03 Jan 2014

Emospark is a cube-shaped "artificial intelligence console" that uses face-tracking and language analysis to assess human emotion and deliver relevant content accordingly.

Created by inventor Patrick Rosenthal, the Emospark console measures 90 x 90 x 90 and is designed to sit in the home and interact with people. At its core lies a chip called the "Emotional Processing Unit" that allows the system to build up an Emotional Profile Graph of the people in the house.

To communicate with the Android-powered Emospark, users can simply talk to it through speaking or typing into their tablet, mobile phone (which means it can gauge your emotions on the move), computer or TV. It combines this with face-tracking technology to gauge the user's likes and dislikes by categorising their emotional responses to music, videos and other content (using an emotional spectrum based on seven emotions: joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and anticipation). Users can also connect with Facebook and YouTube to help the cube build up a history of interests.

Emospark initially tries to recommend particular pieces of content -- be it a song or a YouTube video -- that might help to improve the user's mood. So, for example, the cube might tell you that your friend Michael has posted a new video onto Facebook and it has 12 likes, would you like to watch it. If you say yes, the cube will play it on the TV or other device. If you start to laugh, it will show you similar content.


Levy Rosenthal explained to that sharing content is about sharing emotions. "Hundreds of millions of people post pictures, music and videos because they want to share the emotions that are inside. You want to see if other people like it, if they share the same emotions." Emospark also acts as a virtual assistant, connecting to Wikipedia and collaborative knowledge community Freebase. This means you can ask your cube questions, much in the same way you might speak to Siri. Emospark will reply in a conversational way, searching through records of previous conversations and selecting an appropriate response to your comments. Over time, the cube will develop its own personality based on the interactions it has with people, said Levy Rosenthal.

Rostenthal told that Emospark is designed to achieve "a positive singularity". He explained that there are two versions of the future: one which goes in the way of the Terminator, with robots based on pure logic and another full of emotions, "like Wall-E, a cute robot full of emotions who saves humans from logical robots". "Humans see that robots are coming, but a lot of money for research is coming from the army -- for flying drones and weaponised robots -- and people are getting scared," he explains. "Today all machines are pure logic. But we are emotional. It's important for machines to understand humans on an emotional level."

Since it's an Android device, the cube can be customised using apps from the Google Play store. Developers are invited to come up with new apps or gaming systems that take advantage of Emospark.

Emospark is currently raising money on Indiegogo.