This Robot Can Guess How You're Feeling by the Way You Walk

Maybe you're sad, plodding along with your head slumped and shoulders sagging. Maybe you're angry and alert, hurrying along upright. Whatever your gait, that combined with your facial expression is nonverbally signaling to other people how much space they should give you--and being able to accurately read these cues is an essential skill for our social species. Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed an algorithm called ProxEmo, which gives a little wheeled robot the power to analyze your gait in real time, and to take a guess at how you might be feeling. Based on that perceived emotion, the robot can choose its route to give you more or less space. This might seem like a small matter for robot-human interactions, but we might also imagine that one day, when machines are sophisticated enough, they might read a sad person's gait and try to help them.