IBM Research - Almaden Creating computers that know how you feel   BlueEyes nimal survival depends on highly developed sensory abilities. Likewise, human cognition depends on highly developed abilities to perceive, integrate, and interpret visual, auditory, and touch information. Without a doubt, computers would be much more powerful if they had even a small fraction of the perceptual ability of animals or humans. Adding such perceptual abilities to computers would enable computers and humans to work together more as partners. Toward this end, the BlueEyes project aims at creating computational devices with the sort of perceptual abilities that people take for granted. How can we make computers "see" and "feel"? BlueEyes uses sensing technology to identify a user's actions and to extract key information. This information is then analyzed to determine the user's physical, emotional, or informational state, which in turn can be used to help make the user more productive by performing expected actions or by providing expected information. For example, a BlueEyes-enabled television could become active when the user makes eye contact, at which point the user could then tell the television to "turn on". In the future, ordinary household devices -- such as televisions, refrigerators, and ovens -- may be able to do their jobs when we look at them and speak to them.