Detecting Deception Through the Power of Augmented Reality, Facial and Voice Recognition

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Children hate to be bothered with the simple but important things in life, like washing your hands or brushing your teeth.  My 9-year-old son woke up today and had a big smile on his face.  I asked him in a friendly way, “Did you brush your teeth this morning when you woke up?”  He glanced at me, shifted his body posture, and blurted out, “Sure did Dad.”  He turned his back and walked towards his toys.  Something told me I should challenge this simple response.  I have asked this question many mornings and he gives me the same answer but my gut was telling me today was different.

I approached my son and asked him again, “Are you sure you are telling me the truth?”   Watching his facial expression closely,  I noticed a nervousness in his face and poor eye contact.  He seemed a bit anxious.   I grabbed his hand and said, “Let’s go check out your toothbrush and see if it is wet?”  He did not say a word and walked with me to prove me wrong.  As we got close to his toothbrush, he stopped in his tracks, lowered his head, and the mea culpa flowed from his mouth and he muttered, “I didn’t brush my teeth dad.”

We had a long talk about lying but that is not the point of this blog post. Why was I successful in detecting deception from my son?  I am a trained investigator that has had years of experience and classes focused on how to detect deception.  Our bodies show verbal and non-verbal cues that scream whether we are lying  or telling the truth.  Truthful people shows signs of being composed, attentive, open posture, make good eye contact and show sincerity in their facial expressions.  Deceptive people can appear anxious, shift their posture constantly, slouch, and appear anxious just to name a few indicators.

Our smartphones now have voice recognition to make phone calls, utilize facial recognition  to identify and tag our friends on social networking sites, and use augmented reality to see Twitter tweets around us.  We are not that far away from creating powerful applications to detect deception in our lives.

A profession from the University of Tilburg recently studied the responses from Lance Armstrong, who confessed to his doping use with Oprah Winfrey.   Based on facial and voice recognition, Professior Eric Postma claims that Lance Armstrong was not completely truthful during the interview.    You can view the video here:  http://nos.nl/video/463583-armstrong-loog-tijdens-bekentenis.html to see the technique the Professor used.  Unfortunately the video is not in English but the video speaks volumes to where technology is moving  (Use Google Translate from Dutch to English).

When it comes to detecting deception in voice analysis, great strides have been made to detect voice stress analysis.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_stress_analysis.   With the incredible processing power of the smartphone, we will soon see deceptive detection apps that could be very accurate.

Augmented Reality can be one of the greatest ingredients to advance truth detection in the future.  When Augmented Reality glasses arrive how far with this technology go?  A person with AR glasses, voice recognition , and face detection could potentially gain incredible insight to the accuracy of a person’s statement and trustworthiness   Imagine this concept as seen in the below Sight video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK_cdkpazjI)

Maybe I will take my futuristic AR glasses to a used car dealership and ask the car salesman about the car he is trying to sell me.  The overlay in my glasses lets me know that the salesman doesn’t truly believe the car he is selling me  is reliable.  It gives me a 20% confidence indicator based on his facial expression, voice stress, and formulation of his responses to my questions.  Augmented Reality coupled with facial and voice recognition will create users to be expert deception detectors without the need for police training and intense interview and detection courses.

What is your opinion on this subject?  What are some of the positive ways we can use these new technologies to improve our lives?   Maybe Lance Armstrong would have come forward sooner rather then later if this technology was here today?  I might not need AR superglasses for my son but we will see the power of these technologies in our lifetime.    What cues or indicators are leaking out of you while your read this?

Lets hear your feedback!