Researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s Facultad de Informática have developed a computer program capable of human emotion recognition from automated voice analysis.

The application analyses the sound measurements of a conversation, output by another purpose-built program. Then, based on the rules described in the new application, it is able to identify the emotions hidden in an expression and determine whether the speaker is sad, happy or nervous.

Even if the emotion is unclear, the application is able to specify how close the speaker is to each emotion in percentage terms. The application was presented by Susana Muñoz Hernández at the First International Conference on Fuzzy Computation, held in Madeira, Portugal, in 2009.

The application is based on a new tool called RFuzzy, implemented in the Prolog programming language. Prolog is able to represent and operate with what is known as fuzzy logic. Prolog is used primarily in artificial intelligence and expert systems applications. Continue reading …