How was your day? Fine? Stressful? Boring? It might soon be a bit easier to flesh out your answer, or find out how someone else鈥檚 day really went.
All you need is a smartphone, a sensor and a high-tech 鈥渕irror鈥.
By tying together biometric data with visual cues about your surroundings, the technology, called , makes it easy to review your day and pick out the moments that elicited the strongest emotions. Among other applications, it could help autistic people better communicate with their families.
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鈥淲e鈥檝e fit cameras to physiology before, but it was 50-pound [20-kilogram] stuff. Now it鈥檚 off-the-shelf stuff, stuff you can build鈥 says at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology鈥檚 Media Lab in Cambridge, who is part of the team, led by , that developed Inside-Out.
Watch and learn
The biosensor in the Inside-Out system is attached to a wristband, and logs how the electrical properties of the skin change, which gives an indication of whether the user is feeling heightened emotions.
The smartphone, worn around the neck, acts as a lifelogger. It keeps track of the user鈥檚 location and surroundings, taking low-resolution pictures several times a minute, and collects the information from the biosensor over a Bluetooth connection.
Then, at the end of the day, the user can view their experiences on a one-way 鈥渕irror鈥 in front of a computer. The user interacts with the mirror display by gesturing at what they want to see, and the mirror senses these gestures using a Kinect sensor mounted at the bottom of the display.
This allows the user to easily sort through the events of the day, exploring the . The system was presented at the in San Diego, California, in March.
Cool for school?
鈥淭he cool factor is high, and the potential utility is great,鈥 says , who researches personal health informatics at Northeastern University in Boston. But Inside-Out will probably require more testing before it makes it to the general public, he says.
The technology could potentially help families with children who are autistic. Because people with autism often struggle to articulate their emotions, Inside-Out could help parents and caregivers keep track of what events elicited a strong emotional response and act accordingly.
There could also be wider applications. 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 always believe it when you tell them that something鈥檚 bugging you,鈥 says Picard. 鈥淏ut when people see the data, they do something about it.鈥
