MindMaze is a start-up that is developing face tracking that is said to be compatible with any VR headset as it uses low cost electrodes in the foam padding around the headset to detect the actvities in the facial muscles of the users. The hardware is simple, but the software has to be quite sophisticated to interpret the resulting signals.
Analyst Comment
RoadtoVR tried this mask out and said that it is promising but doesn’t quite achieve what you would want. It seems to me that this kind of application is a very good opportunity for the use of AI to learn the responses of each user. However, it’s hard to imagine individual users training the system. That may be the biggest barrier to adoption, although if it is cheap and helps at all, it may well get integrated. It seems to me that the combination of this technology used alongside gaze recognition could help both technologies.
As with gaze, there must be quite a lot of processing, but Moore’s Law should sort that out. (BR)
