In an effort to help blind people perceive the faces of people they are speaking with, Huawei is debuting its Facing Emotions app. Available for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the app takes advantage of AI to help blind people hear emotions and can already translate seven universal emotions — anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, and contempt — into corresponding sounds. To develop this, Huawei worked with the Polish Blind Association.
To accomplish this, the Facing Emotions app uses the phone's back camera to scan the faces of conversation partners, by identifying facial features like eyes, nose, brows, and the mouth. All of this can be accomplished while offline, as the device will use built-in machine learning algorithms to detect emotions and interpret them as sounds.
Why This Trend Is Growing
- Facial-tracking Emotion Recognition
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in emotion recognition technology using facial tracking.
- AI-based Accessibility Solutions
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in developing AI-based apps to enhance accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
- Offline Machine Learning Algorithms
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in utilizing offline machine learning algorithms for real-time emotion detection.
Industries Being Reshaped
- Smartphone and Mobile Technology
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in integrating facial-tracking emotion recognition apps into smartphones.
- Healthcare and Assistive Technology
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in creating AI-based accessibility solutions for individuals with visual impairments.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Opportunity for disruptive innovation in developing offline machine learning algorithms for emotion detection applications.
