The Economist Features Work of ICT’s Louis-Philippe Morency

The Economist featured research by ICT research assistant professor Louis-Philippe Morency that found a way for a computer to understand a human gesture: the nod. Morency and colleagues developed a computer system that can analyze video and audio recordings to recognize gestures of both posture and voice. The system logs the sequence of these cues, then compares sequences from different speakers to see which combinations routinely lead to a listener nodding and which don’t. Morency found more cues than were previously known for nodding, including a gaze shift toward the listener and the use of the word “and.” The U.S. military is already using the technology to analyze interactions between people in other countries, with the goal of including this information in programs designed to teach cultural differences to soldiers stationed abroad, the article stated.
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