Affectiva in the News: The Race to Emotionally Aware Cars

For several years now, Affectiva has worked to become a category-defining company, offering leading Emotion AI technology for the analysis of facial expressions and emotions in industries like media & advertising via market research, healthcare, robotics, education and many more. More recently however, we have been seeing a lot of interest in applying Emotion AI to automotive – an industry we feel has a lot of potential, and is ripe for disruption!

We believe that AI is key to the development of next generation vehicles, as it will play an essential role in addressing safety issues, improving the overall transportation experience and fostering a trusting relationship between people and their cars. In terms of where Affectiva fits in, our in-cabin people analytics solution has the potential to enable OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to analyze nuanced and complex emotional and cognitive driver states to shape human-machine interaction in cars - and the subsequent brand experience that will result from this kind of intelligence.

With exciting automotive partnerships and products in the works, Affectiva has begun making headlines around our vision for the future of transportation, and the crucial role that Emotion AI will play.

Check out a few of our favorite pieces:

Forbes, The Next Frontier Of Artificial Intelligence: Building Machines That Read Your Emotions

In this piece, our CEO and co-founder Rana el Kaliouby speaks with Forbes’ Bernard Marr about Affectiva’s mission to build multi-modal Emotion AI. We are particularly excited about multi-modal Emotion AI’s role in the automotive industry and its potential to solve the “hand-off challenge” that many are facing in semi-autonomous cars, to ensure that automated cars can safely assess the driver’s mental state before switching from automated to manual driving mode.

Xconomy, 3 A.I. Predictions for 2018: Emotion, Data, Ethics

In this piece, Rana shares a few predictions for 2018, including how real-world data will be the new AI differentiator. For example, the company that is best able to collect mass amounts of real-world driver data to help train algorithms for in-cab use, will be the one to see huge success, setting it apart from the competition.

Forbes, 51 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Predictions For 2018

This article by Forbes’ Gil Press also takes a look at what’s up next for AI in 2018, including perspectives from Affectiva. We were excited to see that of the 51 predictions, Affectiva’s was listed first! We predict that in 2018, the automotive industry will undergo massive disruption, as OEMs and Tier 1s become increasingly aware that they need to adopt AI to address not only the external vehicle environment but to understand the in-cabin experience as well.

CNET, Happy or sad? Your future car might know the difference

After speaking with our product manager Abdo Mahmoud at GPU Tech Conference last year, CNET’s Wayne Cunningham featured us in an article on building emotionally aware vehicles. The piece highlights the benefits of giving cars knowledge of their passengers’ mental states to detect when they are fearful, confused or frightened, so that it can adjust the driving style accordingly.

Emotion AI is Hitting the Road

Looking ahead to the rest of 2018, we hope to continue to make headline-worthy strides in AI and automotive. We have a number of exciting partnerships, products, announcements and events on the horizon, so be sure to keep your eye on the news, as the race to build next-generation vehicles continues.

For further reading on Affectiva’s work with automotive:

Interested in learning more about the importance of driver state monitoring? Access the Future of Mobility Webcast recording here, “The Future of Mobility: Trends and Opportunities for the Next Generation of Vehicles."

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