A Brighton company, founded in 2015, that makes smart glasses with sensors that read facial muscle movement to understand mood, eating and health.
Emteq Labs is a Brighton company that builds smart glasses for health. Its product, Sense, is described as the world's first emotion-sensing smart glasses. Tiny optical sensors around the rim of the frames pick up subtle movements of the facial muscles, and a small downward-facing camera records what the wearer eats. Software then turns that information into insights about expressions, mood, eating habits, posture and activity, which the wearer can choose to share with researchers, coaches or clinicians. The current version weighs about 62 grams, and the company has made development kits available to commercial partners.
The company was founded in 2015 by Dr Charles Nduka, who is its chief science officer and also works as a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. Its stated mission is to improve health and wellbeing by understanding emotional reactions and behaviour patterns. Nduka has said the glasses let wearers look inward rather than outward. The company says it holds 27 patents and 28 peer-reviewed publications and is working with researchers on conditions including depression, anxiety and autism.
Emteq is based in Brighton. Its early research work was done with UK partners: a 2016 project called Frame, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, brought it together with the Queen Victoria Hospital, Nottingham Trent and Coventry Universities and the charity Facial Palsy UK, to develop glasses that help people with facial palsy do their exercises at home. Researchers at the University of Bristol have also used the glasses to study eating in everyday life, showing how it works with UK universities.
Steen Strand joined as chief executive in October 2024, having earlier led Snap's augmented reality glasses division. Emteq says it wants to build a general facial-data platform rather than one product, and plans to license its algorithms to other companies. Technology writers have noted that outside experts raised questions about privacy and about how reliably facial expressions can be read across different people, which shows the company works on issues that matter to the public. We did not find published detail on culture, benefits or headcount, so we do not describe them here.
A company like this employs optical and electronics engineers, machine-learning and software developers, clinical and research scientists, product and industrial designers, and people who work with hospitals, universities and commercial partners. The mix of health, psychology and wearable design suits people interested in science, technology or healthcare, and a clinician-founder means the company stays close to real patient needs.
Website: emteqlabs.com
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