The car that knows you're angry

This is the aim of researchers at PSA Peugeot Citroën who are working on the development of a system that would play relaxing music or change lighting within the car once these negative emotions have been detected.

According to Dr. Michaël Thémans, deputy director of the TraCE - Transportation Center at EPFL in Switzerland, other inteventions could include changing the olfactive environment within the car, and/or adapting the seat’s position to a more relaxing mode.

Working with EPFL, the project aimed to develop computer vision-based technologies that are able to detect anger and irritability in real time with a standard camera while accounting for constraints specific to cars, such as limited on-board computational power. 

In order to read a driver’s emotional state EPFL’s Signal Processing 5 Laboratory (LTS5) adapted a facial detection device for use in a car, using an infrared camera placed behind the steering wheel.

Irritation is often expressed differently so to simplify their task, lead researchers Hua Gao and Anil Yüce from LTS5 chose only to track anger and disgust because they’re said to manifest in a similar way to irritation.