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Emotion Detector Like PKD's Voight-Kampff Empathy Test

A computerized camera system can see that you are lying by watching your face as you talk. This device looks at the tiny tell-tale signs like dilated pupils, pressing lips together, wrinkling the nose, swallowing, blinking and facial asymmetry. But that's not all the camera can see.

The thermal sensors built into the system can detect swelling blood vessels around our eyes as well.


(Biometric face analysis)

The system, developed by a team from the universities of Bradford and Aberystwyth in conjunction with the UK Border Agency, was unveiled today at the British Science Festival in Bradford.

Science fiction fans recall the Voight-Kampff empathy test used to distinguish an "andy" from a person in Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep:

"I'm not a peace officer," Rick said. "I'm a bounty hunter." From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voight-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments...

"This" - he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires - "measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know this to be a primary autonomic response... This records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles.
(Read more about Dick's Voight-Kampff empathy test)

Here is the apparatus as shown in Ridley Scott's 1982 movie Blade Runner.

From BBC.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/13/2011)

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Index of related articles:

Biometric security overview
Biometrics Glossary
Characteristics of successful biometric identification methods
Biometric identification systems
Biometric technology on the leading edge
Biometric identification - advantages
Biometric security and business ethics
Biometric authentication: what method works best?
Iris Recognition
Iris Scan

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