Artificial intelligence is an on-demand technology that is booming like never before. And so many big tech companies are adopting and using it in various modes to provide their users with great products and services. Affectiva is one such company that is based in Boston that builds artificial intelligence which is capable of understanding human emotions, activities, cognitive states, and objects people use, by analysing facial and vocal expressions. The company was spun out of MIT Media Lab and created the new technology category of artificial emotional intelligence. Affectiva builds its artificial intelligence with various other technologies such as deep learning, speech analytics, computer vision, and other large amounts of data that have been collected in real-world scenarios.

Dr Mark Woods is one of our panellists in the afternoon. Mark leads the Autonomy and Robotics group at SCISYS UK. We invited him to tell us more about himself ahead of the conference. Mark, thank you so much for accepting our invitation to be a panellist. And you've developed autonomous/AI/ML based systems for Mars Exploration including the European Space Agency's first robotic mission to Mars!