EC Grant Helps Link Emotional Response to Sales

The European Commission has awarded EUR 3.6m to Imperial College London and emotion measurement specialist Realeyes, to develop their technology.

London-based Realeyes offers facial coding technology which already measures the 'seven basic emotions' - including happiness, surprise and fear - as well as engagement, and is used by clients for pre- and post-testing of ads; but with the help of the EC cash it will work on teaching standard computer webcams to automatically detect whether a person likes or dislikes what they're seeing. The firm says 'Likeability' is 'a complex emotional state, which automated emotion measurement technologies cannot currently measure'.

A new project to be known as 'SEWA: Automatic Sentiment Analysis in the Wild' will tap what Realeyes says is 'the largest worldwide database of how 'likeability' is linked to emotional reactions' - based on the emotional responses of over 60,000 people in conjunction with answers to a series of 'likeability' questions. With the help of the new funds, the partners will develop automated technology to quantify the link between likeability and emotions.

Professor Maja Pantic from Imperial College will lead the research, with guidance from an industry board including Ipsos, which a year ago signed a deal to use Realeyes' facial coding and body gesture response metrics. The board also includes AOL, Skype and educational games specialist Kaplan. Pantic comments: 'It's fantastic that a company at the cutting edge of technology, such as Realeyes, has such close ties to academia. It means academic breakthroughs can find real-life applications through commercial partnerships very quickly.'

According to Realeyes CEO Mihkel Jäätma (pictured), 'It's very exciting to be part of this powerful consortium aiming to master new indicators of behaviour that were previously too subtle, even to the human eye.' Elissa Moses, Ipsos' EVP of Neuroscience and Emotion,adds: 'The SEWA project promises to break new ground in understanding how to efficiently assess complex emotional response and offer new insight for sizing up advertising, media and other types of marketing stimuli potential.'

Web site: www.realeyesit.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.