tech:

taffy

Head-Mounted Cameras Could Help Robots Understand Social Interactions

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have developed a method for detecting where people’s gazes intersect. What is everyone looking at? It’s a common question in social settings, because the answer identifies something of interest, or helps delineate social groupings. Those insights someday will be essential for robots designed to interact with humans, feels the researchers.

The researchers tested the method using groups of people with head-mounted video cameras. By noting where their gazes converged in three-dimensional space, the researchers could determine if they were listening to a single speaker, interacting as a group, or even following the bouncing ball in a ping-pong game.

The researchers’ algorithm for determining “social saliency” could ultimately be used to evaluate a variety of social cues, such as the expressions on people’s faces or body movements, or data from other types of visual or audio sensors.

The researchers say they were surprised by the level of detail they were able to detect. In the party setting, for instance, the algorithm didn’t just indicate that people were looking at the ping-pong table; the gaze concurrence video actually shows the flight of the ball as it bounces and is batted back and forth.

That finding suggests another possible application for monitoring gaze concurrence: player-level views of ball games. If basketball players all wore head-mounted cameras, for instance, it might be possible to reconstruct the game, not from the point of view of a single player, but from a collective view of the players as they all keep their eyes on the ball.

Another potential use is the study of social behavior, such as group dynamics and gender interactions, and research into behavioral disorders, such as autism.

The research was sponsored by the Samsung Global Research Outreach Program, Intel and the National Science Foundation.

Upload: 12-26-12

Just in

Tembo raises $14M

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Tembo, a Postgres managed service provider, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.

Raspberry Pi is now a public company — TC

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at today’s exchange rate, writes Romain Dillet. 

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.