November 28, 2011

Spanish researchers develop emotion-recognizing automated telephone systems

by Gavril Mankoo

We’ve all spent a few hours of our lives calling customer care centers and listening to the monotonous blabbering of automated telephone services, and most of these hours have pulled long frowns on our faces. The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Universidad de Granada in Spain have come up with a computer system that recognizes the emotional state of a person speaking to it and accordingly changes it’s behavioral and speech patterns, adapting in a way good enough to lessen the stress involved. Also, the system easily detects anger, boredom, doubt and other such emotions in people’s voices and accordingly changes its tone to better suit the conversation!

[Gizmag]