Skip to main content

O2Amps glasses designed to help read peoples’ emotions find other applications

By
Along with facial expressions, tell-tale variations in facial blood flow that causes reddening and whitening of the skin can also give an indication of people's emotions. To take advantage of this, 2AI Labs developed a special pair of glasses designed to enhance a person's color vision to better enable them to perceive the oxygenation and hemoglobin variations in another person's face, and thus their emotional state. The glasses are now finding a variety of applications, from medical to security.

Evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi believes that color vision in primates evolved in order for us to detect social cues, emotions and the states of our friends or enemies. When conversing with a person, blushing indicates he/she is embarrassed and if the blood drains from the face, it indicates the person is scared or apprehensive.
Changizi says the human eye is specifically tuned to see blood, and the amount of oxygen in blood, right through the skin. “We can often tell when someone is sick, and even what ails them, merely by looking at them.”
So following this theory, he and his colleagues at 2AI Labs have been developing special glasses to visually enhance for the user oxygenated blood and blood pooling, and thus amplify the social cues that allow us to perceive emotions more clearly. The glasses are called O2Amps (O2 for oxygen, Amp for amplification).
Any product that is designed to help read people’s emotions is likely to find strange bedfellows and the eyewear has already caught the attention of law enforcement. The O2Amp glasses are currently under testing by the U.S Navy, with 2Al labs also testing a pair of mirrored-lensed O2Amps for use by poker players.
The technology is claimed to enhance what our eyes do naturally, by removing noise from the blood signal, giving a clearer view of patients, their health, vitality, and state of mind. So, the spectacles are now also being trialed in a number of innovative medical applications. Because the lenses also enhance detection of what is beneath the skin, they are being used to help nurses identify veins and amplify trauma and bruising that might be invisible to the naked eye.
Allowing people with color blindness to more accurately differentiate colors is another potential application for the O2Amps that has shown promise. The Oxy-Iso version of the glasses has been found to diminish the red-green deficiency that lies behind this perceptual disability. Currently this effort seems to have run into a hitch, however, because the existing glasses also hinder the perception of blues and yellows (which presents a problem for driving).
Despite this limitation, the potential applications for the O2Amps are many and varied. The Changizi O2Amps blog fields questions from individuals that are interested in using the glasses for their own unique purpose. Dating and other social activities make the top of the list, while others have inquired about possible uses in the field of visual arts.
“Indeed, we’ve found lots of interest from artists, although we hadn’t quite anticipated it,” said Dr Changi, who still believes that by far the greatest impact the O2Amps will have is in the medical field. “We’ve received great interest from medical professionals interested in trying out the O2Amp, and we’re moving now to get them in hospitals and among clinical staff everywhere.”
Back in September 2012 Gizmag covered the EnChroma glasses, which were specifically developed to assist people with color blindness. Unlike the O2Amps, the EnChroma sunglasses use a proprietary coating on the lenses and work by selectively reducing the transmission of given wavelengths of light, thus allowing red and green to stand out.
The O2Amps glasses are now available for purchase through the O2Amps website and Amazon for US$297.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 URLs to Find Out What Google Knows About You

By
Google is much more than just a search giant. It is also home to many of your favorite products: Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome, just to name a few. Apart from that, it also offers many products to help you  keep track of your data . Most of these are  hidden deep  inside the My Account dashboard, which many users don’t really know of. These hidden tools  may reveal interesting details  about your usage of Google’s many services. We’ve compiled a list of important Google URLs of some  hidden tools  that carry information of what you did with Google, mostly from the searches that you have made on their many products, the voice searches and typed out Google searches that you have made. Are you ready to  find out what how Google knows about you ? 1.  Google Dashboard Google Dashboard offers  transparency and control over the personal data stored with your Google Account. You can  view  and  manage the data gener...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edible water balloons that could get rid of the need for plastic bottles

By
In case you didn’t know, bottled water is destroying the planet. We know that we need to be drinking plenty of water. It’s important. But the plastic bottles they’re sold in are terrible for the environment. One solution is using reusable bottles that you can fill from any nearby taps instead of buying a new bottle each time. Another solution is much more exciting. A group of engineers from Skipping Rocks Lab have developed a wonderful thing called The Ooho!. It’s a globe filled water that you can pop in your mouth whole. The outer shell is made of algae, so it’s edible and biodegradable. Meaning there’s no need for packaging or plastic – the globes of water are self-contained and ready to consume. Exciting, right? Plus they’re wobbly and they look cool, which is always a bonus. The team have now created a crowdfunding page to make their creation available to the public, with goals of selling The Ooho! at festival and marathons within the next 12 m...
Post a Comment
Read more

New "Super-Earth" discovered only 22 light years away

By
An international team of scientists led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours. This remarkable new discovery suggests that habitable planets could exist in a wider variety of environments than previously believed. Of the 750-odd  exoplanets  (extrasolar planets) discovered so far only very few can be considered " Super-Earths ." This newly discovered example called GJ667Cc is rocky like Earth and is rich in heavy chemical elements such as iron, carbon and silicon. Positioned at a distance from Earth of 22 light years, corresponding to a bit over 129 trillion miles (209 trillion km), the planet can be considered to be on Earth...
Post a Comment
Read more