Xbox One Kinect reading emotions and heart rate

Ooh, what a fancy new sensor the Xbox One's Kinect has. With a 1080p camera and some nonsense about photons, it's more accurate and more reliable. And it knows when you're afraid. With the big reveal today, Microsoft has demonstrated using Kinect on Xbox One to detect users' heart rate and facial expressions.

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Ooh, what a fancy new sensor the Xbox One's Kinect has. With a 1080p camera and some nonsense about photons, it's more accurate and more reliable. And it knows when you're afraid. With the big reveal today, Microsoft has demonstrated using Kinect on Xbox One to detect users' heart rate and facial expressions.

Microsoft showed Wired these fancy features and more in a demo of the new sensor.

MS didn't go into details, but one imagines that it detect heartbeats with the technique of amplifying images to exaggerate changes in your skin tone as blood rushes around.

The demo's a little shaky, though. Kinect seemed confident the host's heartrate stayed at 60bpm throughout the entire demonstration, so it's either a little imprecise or a fantastic tool for detecting robots clad in synthflesh. Or not quite ready yet. Who could say?

It's a feature obviously useful in exercise software, but imagine the possibilities of games reacting to your emotional state, playing you like a puppet and watching you dance. Valve Software has been pretty interested in that sort of biometric data for some time too.

This could dovetail nicely with another Kinect feature demoed to Wired, detecting facial expressions. By scrutinising your face, software can detect what sort of face you're pulling--happy, neutral, and so on--as well as whether you're "engaged," if you're looking away, if your eyes or mouth are open, and so on. Again, this is a bit wonky right now, but fiendish developers could use it to pull some clever tricks.

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  • reply
    May 21, 2013 2:00 PM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Xbox One Kinect reading emotions and heart rate.

    Ooh, what a fancy new sensor the Xbox One's Kinect has. With a 1080p camera and some nonsense about photons, it's more accurate and more reliable. And it knows when you're afraid. With the big reveal today, Microsoft has demonstrated using Kinect on Xbox One to detect users' heart rate and facial expressions.

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      May 21, 2013 2:08 PM

      /Hopes it detects whining elitist assholes

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      May 21, 2013 2:18 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 21, 2013 2:21 PM

      Two cool things from the architecture panel: the camera has a 60% wider fov so you can fit up to six people 'in frame' (vs. 2 for the existing model), and because of the wider fov you can be 3 to 4 feet closer to the sensor than you could before. This is good news for people with smaller living rooms and in college dorms.

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      May 21, 2013 3:38 PM

      really impressive tech

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      May 21, 2013 5:00 PM

      Could be interesting for an online Poker game.

      I just had a vision of the old Wolf 3D, you know B.J's face in the stat window? Developers could implement your own face for multi-player in this style, or better still... use the data for a graphical rep of your face. Like an advanced version of that screenshot thing in Burnout.

      Huh, be funny if this data was used in a fighting game for example... where you have to beat the player (rather than avatar) down. If both players are truly icemen, the fight could go on and on until someone falls asleep.

      Or or or or or...

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      May 21, 2013 5:01 PM

      Player two, please stop fapping

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        May 21, 2013 5:28 PM

        (X) - Achievement unlocked : Fap in front of a Kinect

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      May 21, 2013 5:31 PM

      [deleted]

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      May 21, 2013 5:35 PM

      Nintendo wanted to hook you up to a sphygmomanometer.

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      May 21, 2013 6:03 PM

      Can we put a "Too fucking young to play on Xbox Live" detection feature on there?

      Something to keep all the prepubescent little fucktards offline...please?

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      May 22, 2013 11:22 PM

      Ok, just watched this - that's seriously impressive. Did not think this could be done in a mass-market device in 2013.

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