Visitors invited to pull faces to change tunes on a mood detecting radio

Visitors are invited to pull faces at an interactive prototype radio that detects your mood to change the tune.

The device called Rapport will be on display at an exhibition held at Imperial College London next week.

Rapport uses visual recognition technology to pick up key facial cues to determine the mood of the listener. For example, the user can frown at the radio if they are unhappy with the tune that they are listing to as a cue for it to change to another station. Smiles may indicate to the radio that the listener wants it to play more of the same music.

The Rapport radio will be on display at the Imperial Show 2014, supported by Imperial Innovations, which showcases working prototype designs developed by students as part of the Innovation Design Engineering course. This is jointly run by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Forty six prototype technologies and concepts will be on display, many of the technologies are award winning and some are already being spun out into start-up companies.

The Imperial Show 2014 will run from Monday 30 June to Thursday 3 July 2014.

Also on display is a device called MYTempo, which is worn on the wrist and can be used by the wearer to alter their level of alertness or relaxation. The student team behind MYTempo say it could provide a safe substitute for products such as coffee or an alternative to techniques such as meditation, enabling people to be in more control of how they feel and perform without any side effects.

Another technology that visitors can interact with is a prototype material that could enable those with prosthetic limbs to feel the sensation of touch. The patented material would cover a prosthetic arm, relaying sensory information to the wearer’s brain so that they could, for example, feel another person’s touch via their prosthetics for the first time.

Exhibition goers are also invited to feel what it is like to be someone else and play around with a device that gives them the sensation of being in another person’s body. The Pretender Project uses a series of readily available technologies such as virtual reality headsets, microphones and wide angled cameras to give the wearer the sensation that they are in another person’s body. The project aims to explore what it means to control and be controlled by another person.

Other highlights on display include a prototype material that mimics photosynthesis and converts carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Visitors can also learn more about an intelligent prototype wearable device that learns from you and uses information about your environment and sends you sensory information about the environment you are moving through. For example, the device can chill your skin to warn you that you are walking through a dangerous neighbourhood.

 Those with an eye for design can also investigate an electronic pen, pad and virtual reality goggles that enable the user to sketch and alter their drawings in 3D.

See the press release of this article