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Sony patents saliva-analysing sensor

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Yes, really. The Japanese company apparently has some very odd ideas for enhancing PlayStation 4 gameplay, including asking gamers to dribble on bits of electronics.

The patent was filed back in October 2012 but published yesterday. “Emotion recognition or understanding the mood of the user is important and beneficial for many applications; including games, man-machine interface etc.,” the patent states. “Emotion recognition is a challenging task due to the nature of the complexity of human emotion; hence automatic emotion recognition accuracy is very low.”

The patent involves a whole host of sensors all over the user’s body – a ring on the finger to measure heart rate, blood pressure and respiration; a “band/cap” to wear on the head and measure brain activity; and the saliva sensor, which would sit behind your two front teeth and measure levels of enzymes and hormones, indicating your emotional state. This data would then be transmitted to a “computer system” to gauge the user’s reactions.

It’s unclear – and frankly unlikely – if Sony actually plans to develop any of this tech, despite the patent’s publication. The finger-ring, in particular, reminds us of Nintendo’s Vitality Sensor – a very similar add-on for the Wii that was shown off in trade shows back in 2009 and promptly disappeared from the earth after everyone pointed out how weird, stupid and weird-stupid it was. We suspect a similar fate for Sony’s concepts.

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