Pay Per Laugh: facial recognition application with real-time statistics from Glassworks Barcelona

Winner of eight lions (one of them gold) at the Cannes Lions festival 2014, the Pay Per Laugh app, developed by Glassworks Barcelona, After installing it on an iPad, it detects any facial expression that is programmed in advance and generates statistics on the number of smiles, laughter, cries, etc. that detects.

The Pay Per Laugh software has been developed entirely by Glasswork Barcelona, specifically by Xavi's Lab, special projects department of this company directed by Xavi Tribó. This application, installed on an iPad, It is based on a simple FaceTracker and a facial expression detector (risa, smile, crying, surprise,…) what counts, lists and generates statistics on the number of smiles, or pre-programmed expressions, that detects.

Every time you recognize a smile, The iPad takes a photo and sends it to the PPL server to perform the corresponding statistics. This application can be used, as can be read in subsequent paragraphs, with multiple functionalities since, according to the programming parameters of the face detector, is able to recognize various types of emotional states if they are translated into a physical expression.

The 'Pay Per Laugh' project, in which Glassworks Barcelona has worked, has been awarded eight lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2014, held last June as reported Digital AV Magazine; including a gold one in the Augmented Mobile Experience category; another silver in Live Events and the rest bronze.

Show experience

An example of the usefulness of Pay Per Laugh was held a few months ago at the Aquitàniade Barcelona theater. The Cyranos McCann advertising agency and the Teatreneu theater group, with the collaboration of the production company Canada, premiered a unique session of Improshow, for which viewers paid based on the number of times they laughed, according to data collected with this application.

Every smile had a price 0,30 euros, up to a maximum price of 8 euros so that the audience would not hold back and that no one would have to cry for having laughed too much. Once the show is over, the audience could check the photographs that showed each and every one of his smiles during the show, in addition to choosing if they wanted to pay for smiles made or the fixed price of the Improshow.

The result of the experience was an average of 49 laughter from spectator, which would have entailed a cost of 14,7 entrance euros, If the limit had not been 8 euros. FaceTracker detected and recognized linked facial expressions, on this occasion, to laughter and smile counter.

To count the smiles, Each seat was equipped with an iPad with a facial recognition camera, with real-time statistics for each viewer at the end of the show.

Xavis Lab

The special projects department of Glassworks Barcelona, Xavi’s Lab, directed by Xavi Tribó, was created to carry out projects that moved away from traditional digital post-production services. Assistance is offered from there., supervision and development of solutions such as creative projections, mapping, holograms, stereography, augmented reality or its latest development, Pay Per Laugh.

As those responsible point out, Xavi's Lab has turned out to be a laboratory for projects that combine interactivity and emerging technologies; real-time manipulation and high-quality content.

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