Imagine an infallible lie detector test. If a machine could read a person's thoughts and feelings perfectly, would it dedicate itself to public service and work for INTERPOL, or perhaps run off to Las Vegas to make a fortune playing poker? As it turns out, this perfect polygraph prefers playing ping-pong. Like many of the high-tech displays at this year's China International Import Expo (CIIE), it seemed like something out of science fiction. There, in Shanghai, Japan's Omron Corporation unveiled the latest and greatest version of its famous flagship, FORPHEUS. This is a robot whose description reads like a profile on a dating app: intelligent table tennis player, highly sensitive to your emotional state. Not only can FORPHEUS read the spin on the ball, it can make thousands of calculations per second to determine exactly how you felt when you hit it. As Omron engineer Liu Xiaojun explains, a sensor detects everything from your eye movement to your heartrate. "For instance, blinking suggests emotional tension," says Liu. FORPHEUS continuously runs this data through AI algorithms designed to interpret human emotion. What, you may ask, is the advantage of such emotional intelligence in a machine built for sport? FORPHEUS automatically panders to your style of play. While it could be interrogating criminal masterminds or out-reading Daniel Negreanu for million-dollar pots, FORPHEUS just wants you to be happy.

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