FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--International Data Corporation (IDC) recently published an IDC Innovators report profiling four companies that offer affective computing solutions, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and recognize human emotion. The four companies are Affectiva, NVISO, Cogito, and Sightcorp.
The market for affective computing (AC) is nascent, but growing rapidly, enabled by advancements in technology and driven by use cases in industries like automotive, healthcare, and customer service. Affective computing uses hardware and software to identify human feelings, behaviors, opinions, moods, tone, and cognitive states through facial, body (language), and voice detection and recognition technologies. The hardware piece consists of a camera, a touch device, or a microphone and is used to capture facial expressions, vocal expressions, and/or body language. The bulk of AC technology, however, uses software technologies to record, synthesize, analyze, and determine an individual's current mood or cognitive state. Synthesis and analysis of the captured data heavily relies on AI and machine learning algorithms and modeling as well as aspects of natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU).
"Affective computing is being increasingly used by many types of organizations to augment human capabilities and build trust between humans and the machines they interact with," said Hayley Sutherland, senior research analyst, Artificial Intelligence Software at IDC. "Organizations in consumer-facing industries like healthcare, automotive, and retail should consider implementing affective computing to differentiate and optimize their interactions."
Affectiva uses in-cabin cameras and microphones to analyze facial and vocal signals and to recognize the cognitive and emotional states of automobile drivers and passengers, including drowsiness and distraction.
NVISO helps financial advisors to better understand and serve their clients by using biometric facial recognition technology to track and analyze the client's emotions in real time and build a corresponding financial behavioral profile.
Cogito's products analyze behavioral signals such as pitch, tone, pace, turn-taking, vocal effort, and vocal tension within voice conversations and provide real-time guidance to customer-facing agents in service, sales, and care.
Sightcorp uses computer vision and machine learning/deep learning to analyze and recognize faces in a retail environment, generating in-store analytics that measure customer satisfaction and provide real-time customer insights.
The report, IDC Innovators: Affective Computing, 2019 (IDC #US45100719), profiles four companies that offer affective computing solutions, which use artificial intelligence to detect and recognize human emotion.
About IDC Innovators
IDC Innovators reports present a set of vendors – under $100 million in revenue at time of selection – chosen by an IDC analyst within a specific market that offer an innovative new technology, a groundbreaking approach to an existing issue, and/or an interesting new business model. It is not an exhaustive evaluation of all companies in a segment or a comparative ranking of the companies. Vendors in the process of being acquired by a larger company may be included in the report provided the acquisition is not finalized at the time of publication of the report. Vendors funded by venture capital firms may also be included in the report even if the venture capital firm has a financial stake in the vendor's company. IDC INNOVATOR and IDC INNOVATORS are trademarks of International Data Group, Inc.
For more information about IDC Innovators research, please contact Catherine Bonner at cbonner@idc.com.
About IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn.
