An introduction to VOIS (The Visual Ontological Imitation System)

Maybe there are people who just don’t get where you’re coming from. This is an everyday reality for people with autism, but it is not just disabled people who need help with understanding emotion in others.

VOIS is an innovative design for an application (the brainchild of a friend of mine – Jonathan Bishop), which will assist autistic people in recognising the facial moods of people they are talking to and suggest appropriate responses.

Given that VOIS will work irrespective of what language is being spoken, there are obviously cross-over opportunities to use it in areas such as:

• Defence
  Soldiers who have regular contact with, say, a tribal elder, could use it to see whether the elder is being evasive as well as how well his mood changes over time.
• Security
  During interrogation of suspected terrorists, along with standard questioning, VOIS could pick-up evasiveness and suggest more questions in certain areas.
• Immigration
  Again VOIS could help in questioning asylum seekers here too.

Future versions of VOIS could be used via a head camera or fixed camera for surveillance roles. Jonathan is himself autistic.

I’ve agreed to help Jonathan with the development of a prototype version that will run on a range of mobile devices and intend on charting my progress via my blog.