Been hugely interested in the technology startup scene in the Arab world and in the whole world at large in general. Recently came across “Affectiva” ,which showed up on the CNN’s top 10 start ups to watch . The idea of extracting intelligence from facial emotions looks extremely appealing . I think its actually a marketer’s dream come true to be able to gauge the response of their consumers to their products, their ads or commercials.
Repeatedly you get pulled in during a stroll in a shopping mall, park or an airport by some sales person to talk about a certain product or solution, many of us just give the continuous nodding gesture on our face and the famous “I will think about and get back to you” quote, which does not really leave the product owners with any valuable feedback on what we consumers think of they have to offer , such an intelligent in-direct way of interpolating facial emotions sounds really appealing .
However , reading through the affectiva.com website , and the different research papers and use cases , a different use case came to mind about how this ground breaking solution could be used in fighting terrorist acts and security at large . I am not an expert on face gestures and emotions nor on security, but there must be something we can detect on a face of a individual that is about to commit a series act of crime like walking into a shopping mall and shooting people , or maybe walking into an airport, metro station, train station etc , with a bag of explosives and is about to set it to explode killing many innocent people. Imagine an integration between a solution like Affectiva and regular CCTV systems in those vital locations that is automatically scanning facial expressions of people walking in and correlating it against algorithms and what seems according to Affectiva website as an ever growing data base of analytics gathered from around the world.
I tried searching for studies that talk about facial expressions of criminals prior to executing a criminal act but could not find something credible to share here, but I am sure something must exist some where. Such a use case for Affectiva could be really ground breaking in the area of crime prevention and could be a major contribution in that domain.
Hats off to the Affectiva team (which I do not know any of them by the way) , as they are up to something really cool and ground breaking . Check them out on www.Affectiva.com .
