OptiCue [real-time facial expressions recognition system]

According to the Centre for Disease Control, recent studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have revealed that between 1 and 2% of the global population have been diagnosed with autism. This translates to a global autism population of 76 million individuals. One of the main difficulties facing these individuals is social impairment and communication. This means that many autistic individuals can find social interaction quite challenging, since many of the subtle aspects of interaction such as facial expression, body language, or tone of voice can be difficult to detect or understand. Our company’s goal is to provide a tool to make social interaction easier. The OptiCue will perform facial expression detection, provide feedback on the subject’s mood, and help the user to avoid miscommunication. This compact and wearable device uses a small and discrete camera to capture images of the individual the user is interacting with. These images are then sent to a microcontroller which performs some image processing using a facial detection API. Finally, based-off of the image processing, will send feedback to the user regarding the current expression