IBM's latest mouse can understand mood swings

The last place anybody with a shred of sanity would look for comfort from emotional distress is the mouse connected to their computer. But if IBM have anything to do with it, your desktop will soon sympathise with every mood swing and panic attack you experience.

The emotion mouse from IBM will be able to detect through its special sensors six emotional states - anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness and surprise.

The mouse works through a series of sensors: where the forefinger and middle finger touch the buttons, there are sweat sensitive pads; your heartbeat is measured by the pulse of your thumb which is detected at the side of the mouse.

Inside the instrument there is a thermometer which measures the hand's temperature and a sensor next to the mouse ball analyses movements.

After sensing the physiological attributes of the user, the information is related to emotions by using a correlation model.

Your computer may then be able to use the information to adjust its settings or interface to reduce your frustration.

Working on feedback from the mouse, the computer may, for example, be able to judge the person's reactions to products or base a search for comedy sites or programmes on the persons personal perceptions of what is funny.

If the technology can be harnessed to gain a more complete picture of people participating in surveys by gauging people's emotional reactions more accurately, marketing companies may be quick to apply it.

IBM estimates that by 2005 at least 30 per cent of newly acquired household appliances in Europe will interact with humans through speech and sensing devices.

IBM researcher Ms Wendy Ark, who developed the mouse to try to make computers adapt to users, said the field of applications for the technology was limitless. She said: "It is really a new step in human interaction with the computer."

Though people may question what computer scientists were doing studying emotions, Ms Ark said studying how humans interact may teach scientists how to make computers more compatible.

She said: "We use emotions as well as body language, speech, eye contact etc, to communicate whether we are aware of it or not. If our computers could be receptive to these communication channels, they could be more responsive and adaptive."

IBM believes the technology can be used in any number of areas including the steering wheel of cars to detect the nervousness of the driver, or maybe even responding to signs of road rage by automatically slowing down the car.

For many people, the great benefit in computers is that they don't argue, talk back, suffer from mood swings or hangovers and (nearly) always work efficiently no matter what time of the day or night.

In practice, the technology will have to be able to be turned on and off by users, some of whom may find a reactive computer annoying or even sinister.

For some, there is something distinctly Orwellian about the fact that your boss could tell on any given day whether you were panicked, tired, angry or happy without you knowing it.

Currently, the emotion mouse software is about 75 per cent successful in determining a user's emotional state.

One of the areas the technology could become most useful is in computer training and education programs. It could enable computers to observe students' emotional states as they are participating, detecting frustration, excitement, boredom and so on.

The teacher or instructor would then be able to adjust the type and way the information is delivered as well as identifying the most stimulating material for students.

Computer game manufacturers may also benefit with games changing to become easier if the player is frustrated, harder if the player is unchallenged, or more stimulating if the player is bored.

Human understanding and interpretation of the world around us depends to a great extent on our ability to perceive, integrate and interpret visual, auditory and tactile information.

IBM believes that computers would be much more powerful if they had even a fraction of the perceptual ability of humans or animals.

The incorporation of such abilities into computers would enable humans and machines to work together as partners, in a more complimentary way than ever before, it is argued.

However the field of "affective" technology, of which the emotion mouse is a part, embraces all parts of human expression of feelings and aims to make computers more compatible with the human condition.

IBM's BlueEyes project is using sensing technology, like video cameras and microphones, to identify and observe a user's actions - where they are looking, what they are saying or what gestures they are making.

The aim is to translate unspoken body language into mathematical equations that computer software can understand.

Whether or not it is desirable to have a computer that feels as you feel is another question altogether.