AffectiveWear: Facial Expression Recognition in Daily Life

Facial expressions can tell us a lot, from subtle non-verbal communication to hints about a person’s emotional states. In order to recognize facial expressions in realistic scenarios, we developed the eyewear prototype AffectiveWear. AffectiveWear can recognize wearer’s Various facial expressions(Neutral, Happy, Disgust, Angry, Surprise, Fear, Sad, and Contempt). The device is fully integrated, and its appearance is close to normal eyewear using 3d printed front frame and printed circuit board. We can recognize and record a wearer's facial expressions in real life over the day. We integrated photo reflective sensors into our device. The sensors measure the distances between multiple spots of the eyewear frame and the skin surface of a person’s face. After normalization, the inputs are applied to Support Vector Machine algorithm in order to recognize facial expression. The sensors are affordable and accurate enough to capture a subtle facial movements.
Our device can be used for emotional regulation. It is helpful for people who suffer from depression. Also, the device can evaluate the contents of movie or other medias based on facial expressions.