考研阅读精选：面部监测--电子眼告知一切
『网络摄像头现在能发现哪一个广告能够吸引人们的目光，并能够观察人们的情绪和生命体征。』Facial monitoring：The all-telling eye
面部监测：电子眼告知一切
Oct 22nd 2011|from The Economist
http://images.koolearn.com/casupload/upload/fckeditorUpload/2011-11-07/image/d877787c30a24df8afb9bc6b12c2cdd8.jpg
IMAGINE browsing a website when a saucy ad for lingerie catches youreye. You don’t click on it, merely smile and go to another page. Yet itfollows you, putting up more racy pictures, perhaps even the offer of adiscount. Finally, irked by its persistence, you frown. “Sorry fortaking up your time,” says the ad, and promptly desists from furtherpestering. Creepy. But making online ads that not only know you arelooking at them but also respond to your emotions will soon be possible,thanks to the power of image-processing software and the ubiquity oftiny cameras in computers and mobile devices.
Uses for thistechnology would not, of course, be confined to advertising. There isample scope to deploy it in areas like security, computer gaming,education and health care. But admen are among the first to embrace theidea in earnest. Advertising firms already film how people react to ads,usually in an artificial setting. The participants’ faces are studiedfor positive or negative feelings. A lot of research has been done intoways of categorising the emotions behind facial expressions.
Some consumer-research companies also employ goggle-mounted cameras totrack eye movements so they can be sure what their subjects are lookingat. This can help determine which ads attract the most attention andwhere they might be placed for the best effect on a web page.
This work is now moving online. One of the companies doing such work,Realeyes, which is based in London, has been developing a system thatcombines eye-spying webcams with emotional analysis. Mihkel Jäätma, whofounded the company in 2007, says that his system is able to gauge aperson’s mood by plotting the position of facial features, such aseyebrows, mouth and nostrils, and employing clever algorithms tointerpret changes in their alignment—as when eyebrows are raised insurprise, say. Add eye-movement tracking, hinting at which display adswere overlooked and which were studied for any period of time, and theapproach offers precisely the sort of quantitative data brand managersyearn for.
At present the system is being used onpurpose-built websites with, for instance, online research groupstesting the effect of various display ads. The next step is to makeinteractive ads. Because they can spot the visual attention given tothem, as well as the emotional state of the viewer, these ads couldtailor their responses.
As similar gimmicks becomewidespread, privacy concerns will invariably mount. People would need togive consent to their webcams being used in this way, Mr Jäätma admits.One way to persuade internet users to grant access to their imageswould be to offer them discounts on goods or subscriptions to websites.
The technology would make computer games more engaging, too. Sony, forone, thinks that reading players’ emotions with webcams would letsoftware pick up on their subconscious behaviour and change the game inways that would enhance the experience. The company claims that in thefuture it will be possible to have something like a detective game inwhich the camera can read players’ faces and measure their heart ratesin order to have a stab at deciding which ones are lying.
Infact, webcams that monitor a person’s heart rate are soon to appear.Instead of sticking sensors onto the skin, Philips has developed avital-signs camera system which the Dutch company says can measure heartand respiration rates extremely accurately. To calculate the heart ratethe camera detects tiny changes in the colour of the skin. Thesechanges, imperceptible to the human eye, occur as the heart pumps bloodthrough the body. The person’s breathing rate is measured by detectingthe rise and fall of his chest. The firm will soon launch an app forApple’s iPad 2 which will allow people to measure their own heart andbreathing rates using the two webcams in that device. (652 words)
文章地址：http://www.economist.com/node/21533362
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