Emote de' Aura: An Emotional Ambient Device

Introduction

We tried to build an ambient mood lamp that can provide useful information about the emotion or mood of the environment. The main goal of device is to provide information in a calm manner, in the midst of the cacophony of information that we encounter continuously.

Why
Information is all around us; the extent that we are able to discern and the kinds of information that we perceive are dependent on several factors. In this busy and preoccupied information overloaded environment; to ensure the smooth functioning of the home, industry, or school; is covertly dependent on the emotional well-being of ts inhabitants. Some of these include how detailed and interrupting interfaces in the environment are, the ability to perceive, and human interest. Ignoring this important factor might lead to in-efficiency, lack of motivation, stress and other negative energy in the work or home environment.

Where
We envision this device to be used in several settings such as home, office, museums and exhibitions, service and research industries. It may enable employers to create a better work place, and provide managers within the service and research industries with better information with which to base their various decisions.


Sample Scenario

Lets consider an office environment where our device can play a major motivational and managerial role. The device can be in the form of a wall or screen that changes form or color according to the emotional quotient of all the workers in the immediate environment.By having this emotion information displayed and recorded over time, managers may be able to determine the best conditions that keep their workers satisfied with their work environment.


System Architecture

The system consists of three distinct parts as shown in the figure. These parts are as follows.

  • Sensing part that uses a variety of sensor for perception of the environment.
  • Emotion Engine, a piece of software that maps the data coming in to sensors onto the surroundings via bluetooth.
  • Output from emotion engine is 256 levels each of red, green and blue color which can be easily mapped onto surroundings like in lamps/walls etc.

Prototype

The final output of this Emotion Engine is 256 levels each of red, green and blue color as shown in figure below. This can be as simple or as complex as necessary but should follow these input and output constraints. This RGB data is sent over the wireless channels (Bluetooth in our case) to the surrounding ambient device, such as the Emotion lamp that we have built. Our version of the Emotion Lamp consists of an ARM micro-controller board with Bluetooth reception capabilities, 6 RGB LEDs, and some interconnect circuitry inside an off-the-shelf IKEA lamp. The micro-controller reads in these color values from the Bluetooth chip and accordingly signals the LEDS. The lamp, in addition to providing the aesthetics, also acts as a diffuser for the light coming for LED lamps.