News

Homeland Security tests virtual lie detection kiosks

December 29, 2016

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is testing a virtual lie detection system called AVATAR, which is short for Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time, to get a sense of how to handle the flow of people moving into and out of the United States at the border, according to BGR, a news site for the mobile and consumer electronics markets.

The AVATAR virtual agent, also being tested by the Canadian Border Services Agency, asks questions similar to those that a real agent might ask, such as what the traveler is bringing into the country, whether they're carrying weapons, or if they're hiding any illicit drugs. The individual's responses are then analyzed by the system, while the kiosk's all-seeing eye studies the person's facial cues, eye movements, stress level and gestures.

In order to weed out false positives, AVATAR asks simple softball questions at first in order to generate a control measurement to compare the rest of the answers to.