New app decodes babies’ crying for new parents

An innovative application developed at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, which “decodes” the crying of babies to help inexperienced parents, will be presented at the World Finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2018 competition, to be held at the end of July in Seattle, USA.

The iCry2Talk app was developed by students at the university’s electrical and computer engineering faculty under the guidance of Professor Leontios Hadjileontiadis.

Students Anastasia Draha, Andreas Loutzidis and Iasonas Hatzikostas deployed so-called “deep learning” algorithms to analyze the audio signals emitted by crying babies in real time.

The crying is recorded for seven seconds and the possible cause of it shows up in the form of an image, audio and text on the screen of a tablet or mobile phone.

According to Draha, the application decodes a series of feelings, including pain and hunger, and also informs parent whether the baby needs to be burped or have its nappy changed.