Affectiva is an emotion measurement technology company that grew out of MIT's Media Lab. Affectiva has developed software to recognize human emotions based on facial cues or physiological responses. Among its commercial applications, this emotion recognition technology is used to help brands improve their advertising and marketing messages. Another major application has been in political polling. In 2011, the company partnered with Millward Brown, a unit of the Kantar Group, the market research, insight and consultancy division of WPP plc, a London-based advertising and public relations conglomerate.
Emotion measurement technology
Affectiva's technology enables software applications to use a webcam to track a user's smirks, smiles, frowns and furrows, which measures the user's levels of surprise, amusement or confusion. The technology also allows a person's heart rate to be measured from a webcam without the person wearing a sensor. This is accomplished by tracking color changes in the person's face, which pulses each time the heart beats.
Applications
Affectiva's Affdex technology is based on affective science and machine learning algorithms published in the peer-reviewed literature on affect recognition. When a user opts in, Affdex can be used via a low-cost webcam to observe the user's face while he or she watches content on the screen, tracking their smirks, smiles, frowns and furrows to measure their likely levels of surprise, amusement or confusion throughout a viewing experience, and comparing them to other viewers across different demographics. The company developed the first online face tracking system for evaluation of advertising effectiveness as one of several applications of the technology. Their clients for this technology include Coca-Cola and other companies and content-creators who use the technology to better understand viewers' experience -- e.g., to see when a student watching an educational video finds it engaging or boring. The technology is also being used to better understand the state of a driver or passenger in a car, with the aim of improving safety and experience for people inside vehicles. Political polling utilizes the technology to measure people's responses to a political debate. Games using this technology can adapt to a user's emotional experience, or the user's emotional state. In its first three years of operation, Affectiva designed and sold the first comfortably wearable biosensor measuring electrodermal activity, the "Q Sensor," that monitors changes in the user's emotional state via their skin. In September 2017, Affectiva launched a cloudAPI to detect a range of emotion in human speech.
History
Affectiva was co-founded by Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D., who became chief executive officer as of May 25, 2016, and Rosalind W. Picard, Sc.D., who worked as Chairman and Chief Scientist until 2013. Motivated by growing demand for functions provided by the Q sensor and motivated by the medical needs of patients with epilepsy, Picard co-founded a new company, Empatica Inc., that created the first FDA-cleared smart watch for use in Neurology. Both of Affectiva's early products grew out of collaborative research at the MIT's Media Lab to help people on the autism spectrum. The company featured its technology and products at Consumer Electronics Show 2013. A feature length article on the founding and history of Affectiva appeared in the January 19, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.
