MOOD SENSING

Home automation system has reached a revolutionary stage, where any person with home automation at his place can control action of its home appliances with just a touch on his screen and everything then is done by appliances itself. But with predictive analytics coming into picture, even that functionality is not required on the behalf of the person but rather machines are slowly by slowly using business intelligence and analytics tools are analyzing the behavior of the person and are conducting actions on their own.

One of the major steps being taken in this direction is by mood sensing technology. Mood sensing is latest phenomenon which big every company is trying to pitch for. Currently Apple and Microsoft are the big names which have claimed to invent this technology and have claimed for its patent, similarly Kaist a Korean company has claimed patent for the same technology. Mood sensors works by sensing any tiny changes in the goose bumps known as piloerections. These tiny changes can reflect the person’s mood and could be used to determine everything from their experience of music, online ads, TV programs, temperature etc. Moods sensors can analyze your moods and accordingly adjust the brightness and color of room lights for you; it can also adjust the type of music and tv program to be played on Tv by analyzing your mood for you.

The most important feature of mood sensing technology is advertisements which are one of the major sources of revenue for the companies like Google and Facebook, which is prompting other companies like Apple and Microsoft to explore this space due to its potential to offer great revenue generation opportunities for them. One of the major scenarios in online ads has been Location based ads, where the service provider sends ads according to the current location of the customer but the satisfaction level or lead generation opportunity for the service provider highly depends on the current mood of the customer.

If the person is in bad mood then he might ignore the ad, while message delivery cost of the service provider will also go to waste and it might also create the negative mindset in the person for the service provider, leading to the customer loss for it. Hence, through mood sensing technology the service provider can not  only bring higher satisfaction level for its customers but can also get more loyal customers while also optimizing their costs(as they will be sending ads only when the customer is in good mood). Apple through mood sensing is most likely going to attempt at controlling the timing of out-and-about push advertisements, like getting delivered a coupon for a latte when you stroll past your local coffee shop. The filing reads that Apple will include “deliver content that is selected, at least in part, based on the inferred mood.

Some of the products regarding mood sensing have already hit the market .The technology to tune your music to your running rate has been around for a while, with devices such as the Nike+, and adaptive playlisters like Songza can select music according to your mood – even letting you give a “thumbs down” to stuff that doesn’t match. There are also headphones, made by Japanese company Neurowear, that scan your brainwaves to select the music on your smartphone that matches your frame of mind. While for the skin sensing technology wristbands are considered to be the most suitable wearable device.

Data flow(home automation)

• Skin sensors in wristband or headgear on the head will detect your mood analyzing changes in your goose bumps erection or brainwaves.
• This information will then be send to the home gateway which will control the devices around your environment to switch according to your mood.

Data flow (online ads)

• Skin sensors in wristband or headgear on the head will detect your mood analyzing changes in your goose bumps erection or brainwaves.
• This information will be send to your mobile phone which is connected to the wearable mood sensing device through any of the near field communication technologies but considering Bluetooth is most used technology in mobile world , most probable technology which is going to be used is Bluetooth.
• The mobile collecting this data and GPS location of the user will send it to the service provider’s cloud or data center through the app of service provider being installed on your mobile handset.
• The data center then will deliver the ads according to your mood.
• Apple’s mood detection plan – Apple’s unobtrusive mood-detection plans rely on sniffing “recently consumed content” such as “a digital media item, a social networking activity, and/or an invitational content item response. Examples of digital media items can include apps, digital audio, digital videos, digital publications, webpages, invitational content, etc.

Challenges–

• Devices have to be compatible with the mood sensing technology .They should have the intelligence to switch channel or track no. according to the mood.
• Skin sensor technology still not fully developed and has not been implemented even though many companies have filed patent for it.
• Accuracy of mood sensing technology is still under radar and lot of work still needs to be done on it.

Click here for government certification in Information Technology