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NEC Corporation and Realeyes have jointly developed a new emotion analysis service that combines NEC’s biometric identification and video analytics technologies with Realeyes’ emotion analysis technology. This is part of a collaboration announced in July 2020, and NEC will launch this service in January 2021. NEC aims to capture top share of the global emotion analysis service market, which is estimated to be worth 360 billion yen (3.4 billion USD).

Video communications have become more common in our daily lives due to the impact of COVID-19. However, there are many challenges to non-face-to-face communications, such as understanding the intent of other parties and fully grasping their reactions. As a result, user stress is becoming a more important issue.

The new service works in coordination with video communication tools on PCs and smartphones to analyse user emotions from their facial expressions, only with their full consent and due consideration for privacy.

Realeyes’ emotion analysis technology, which has been deployed for more than 180 customers worldwide, analyses user interest and attention based on video communication. Results become available on an Analysis Dashboard almost instantly, and users can review and share results as needed.

This makes it possible to immediately grasp and detect areas of uncertainty in communication, even if participants are not meeting each other directly. Even in real-time interactions, the technology signals communication problem areas and opportunities to improve. The organiser can improve the organisation and facilitation of the meeting by reviewing the Analysis Dashboard, and participants can reflect on their own experiences.

NEC and Realeyes conducted technical verification of this service in August and September of this year, demonstrating the analysis of emotions for participants in web conferences. The capability to analyse the emotions of meeting participants in web conferences and understand their emotional changes has proven to be useful for organisers to reflect on their own progress.

More effective online communications, especially during a global pandemic, improve society’s ability to do business, socialise and live better lives.

Use Cases

Company Meetings and Training Sessions: The degree of attention and experiences of those who join online meetings can be shared by both organisers and participants to improve engagement and efficient comprehension. Organisers can review participant responses for each session and determine strategies for improvement after a meeting. Meanwhile, participants can reflect on their own responses in order to improve their own efforts to focus, comprehend and tackle business tasks.

Online education: Communication and learning challenges are shared by both teachers and students. Reporting and trends related to attention and satisfaction can reveal opportunities to reduce confusion and deliver more engaging educational experiences. Teachers can review student responses and improve instructional content. Conversely, students can review their own responses to deepen their own learning and achieve higher scores and standards.

NEC and Realeyes anticipate the service will be used in applications such as online meetings, training, education, customer support and sales activities, events, and other situations where mutual communication is important. NEC will provide a customised Analysis Dashboard where users can get feedback and advice based on sentiment analysis tuned for each application. NEC and Realeyes will provide service and support, while upholding users’ privacy and promoting digital wellbeing.

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