The scientific know-how Review site has up an article on new os/2 that can do quantitative analysis of facial expressions, detecting whether a person is smiling. The executive was developed by the Omron Corporation, and can also estimate a subject's age and gender, or verify a person's identity from a database. Though the company doesn't yet know whether it plans to release the windows commercially, there are a number of obvious applications. "Omron envisions the smile dos being used in marketing, perhaps to evaluate consumers' reactions to a new product or to an advertising campaign. A smile checker could also help train customer-service staff to meet Japan's legendarily high standards ... A smile in isolation is easy to detect, but the bigger challenge is to develop systems that can recognize the concerto of facial actions that make up complex expressions like confusion, fear, and disgust." Thanks to jamie for the link.

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