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Emteq Labs

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Emteq Labs
Information
Type Private
Industry Facial sensing, emotion recognition, smart eyewear
Founded 2015
Founder Charles Nduka, Graeme Cox
Headquarters Brighton, United Kingdom
Notable Personnel Steen Strand (CEO), Charles Nduka (Chief Scientific Officer)
Products Faceteq, emteqPRO, OCOsense, Sense
Website https://www.emteqlabs.com


Emteq Labs (registered as Emteq Limited) is a British technology company in Brighton that builds sensors for reading facial muscle activity and expressions. It began with sensor-lined faceplates for virtual reality headsets and later moved into sensing glasses.[1][2] The company was founded in 2015 by Charles Nduka, a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon who specializes in facial palsy, and Graeme Cox, its chief executive in the company's early years.[3][4]

Its VR products were the Faceteq prototype and the emteqPRO, a research mask that fits inside VR headsets such as the HTC Vive Pro and the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye. These measure facial electromyography (EMG), pulse and head motion.[5][6] Its later glasses, OCOsense and Sense, use a non-contact optical method the company calls optomyography (OMG). In October 2024 Emteq presented Sense as emotion-sensing eyewear and named former Snap Inc. hardware head Steen Strand as chief executive.[2]

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked founding, directors, status and the crowdfunding result against Companies House and SEC filings, and product specs, dates and study figures against Road to VR, UploadVR, IEEE VR 2017, IEEE Spectrum, Emteq releases, blog posts, support docs and the cited papers. About review dates.

History

Founding and Faceteq (2015-2017)

Emteq Limited was incorporated on 29 July 2015, and its registered office is at the Sussex Innovation Centre in Brighton.[7] Charles Nduka has been a director since incorporation. Graeme Cox was a director from 24 June 2016 to 8 July 2021.[8] Sussex Innovation says the team has been a tenant there over the past decade. It describes Nduka's starting question as how to give people actionable information about their own behavior, an idea that came from seeing his patients struggle to retrain their facial muscles after reconstructive surgery.[3]

In September 2016 Road to VR reported that Emteq had been founded with 1.5 million US dollars of seed funding and was developing Faceteq. Faceteq was a set of sensors in a VR headset faceplate that used electromyography, electrooculography and heart rate. Unlike camera-based facial tracking, it registered movements of the eye, forehead and cheek muscles underneath the headset.[1] The article quoted Cox, described as chief executive and co-founder, saying the system was aimed at developers who wanted to bring human expression and mood into digital environments. It named social VR apps such as vTime as possible uses.[1]

In October 2016 UploadVR tried a prototype built into an Oculus Rift DK2 at the company's office on the University of Sussex campus. A Rift CV1 version was in development, and the company was exploring a foam-liner version for the HTC Vive and Daydream integration. In that demo, each expression took about 30 seconds to calibrate, with the system learning the sensor readings through machine learning. The demos included an avatar that mirrored the wearer's expressions and a cinema screening room for gathering audience reactions, and the technology was already used in a treatment app for facial palsy. Cox said the company expected to have a fully working system by the first quarter of 2017.[4] The research demonstration program of the IEEE VR 2017 conference listed "FACETEQ Interface Demo for Emotion Expression in VR" by Emteq researchers with Cox and Nduka, which showed Faceteq prototype v.05.[9]

emteqPRO and VR research (2018-2023)

The Faceteq and "EmteqVR" prototypes led to the emteqPRO. In a paper published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality in March 2022, Emteq staff and academic co-authors described it as a commercial product then sold through a beta program to selected organizations.[5] Emteq organized the XR Research Awards with Cognitive3D, Pico and Plux Wireless Biosignals. It was a 50,000 euro competition, and all entries had to use biosensors for objective outcome measures. The winners were announced on 13 January 2022 after 319 applications.[10]

Emteq also ran a six-week VR affect-detection study at the Science Museum in London. According to the company, it collected about 730 datasets from museum visitors and classified valence and arousal with 80 to 92 percent accuracy.[11]

Glasses: OCOsense and Sense (2022-present)

Emteq's OCOsense glasses won first place for best demo at the UbiComp/ISWC 2022 conference.[12] The accompanying paper presented the glasses for recognizing facial expressions and for context-aware affective computing in the real world and in augmented reality.[13] Emteq unveiled OCOsense on 22 June 2023 for researchers, content creators and clinicians, with pre-orders opening on 26 June 2023.[14]

On 15 October 2024 Emteq announced Sense, which it called the world's first emotion-sensing eyewear, and appointed Steen Strand as chief executive. A Sense development kit was to be available to commercial partners from December 2024; no price was announced.[2] According to IEEE Spectrum, the first units were a small production run.[15] Strand had been head of hardware and strategy at Snap Inc. from October 2018 to September 2022. He became a director of Emteq Limited in November 2023 and its CEO in October 2024.[16][8]

Corporate structure and funding

According to its 2025 SEC offering statement, the Emteq group consists of the parent company Emteq Ltd in Brighton and two wholly owned subsidiaries:[16]

  • AIDEA Lab Dooel in Skopje, North Macedonia, a data science team that provides data analysis and software development to the parent.
  • Emteq Labs Inc., a Delaware corporation organized on 29 December 2023 with an address in Santa Monica, California. It holds an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to Emteq Ltd's technology and is meant to be the group's commercial arm, starting with Sense.

The same filing says that Emteq Ltd's shareholders include the founder, the CEO and directors, business angels and NCL Investment Management, a British healthcare venture capital firm.[16] In its 2024 announcement the company listed grant support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR i4i), Innovate UK and Horizon 2020.[2]

Emteq Labs Inc. raised money from the public through a Regulation Crowdfunding offering of non-voting common stock at 1.25 US dollars per share, run through DealMaker Securities. The offering had a target of 10,000.69 US dollars and a maximum of 4,999,999.61 US dollars.[16] A progress update filed in December 2025 says the offering ended early on 21 November 2025, having raised 121,612.50 US dollars.[17]

Products

Product Form Introduced Sensing and notes
Faceteq VR headset faceplate (prototype) 2016 (shown) EMG, electrooculography and heart rate sensors in the faceplate; demonstrated on an Oculus Rift DK2; "prototype v.05" shown at IEEE VR 2017[1][4][9]
emteqPRO Sensor mask for VR headsets Beta by 2022 Seven dry facial EMG electrode pairs, a PPG pulse sensor, an IMU and an altimeter; versions for the HTC Vive Pro / HTC Vive Pro Eye and for the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye; ships with a Unity SDK, the SuperVision monitoring app and the Emotion AI Engine[5][6]
OCOsense Sensing glasses for research Unveiled 22 June 2023 OCO optomyography sensors, a 9-axis IMU and an altimeter; streams data over Bluetooth to an iOS app[14]
Sense Sensing eyewear Announced 15 October 2024 Nine optical sensors in the rims and a downward-facing camera for logging food; 62 g; development kit for commercial partners from December 2024[2][15]

emteqPRO

The 2022 Frontiers in Virtual Reality paper gives the emteqPRO's specifications. It has seven pairs of dry EMG electrodes on the face, a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor and a 6-axis IMU. EMG and PPG are sampled at 2,000 Hz and the IMU at 50 Hz. The device weighs 180 g and comes with two insert sizes for wide and narrow faces. At the time the paper listed support for the HTC Vive Pro and Vive Pro Eye and for the Pico G2, Pico G2 4K and Pico Neo 2 Eye.[5] Emteq's support documents describe a later Android version for the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye. The documents also describe an "Open Face" mode, without a headset, that is available only for the Vive versions.[6] The Unity SDK marks events with millisecond timestamps, and the Windows SuperVision app shows live sensor data and contact quality.[5]

OCOsense and Sense

Optomyography tracks skin movement optically without touching the skin, so the glasses can pick up smiles, frowns and eyebrow raises.[18] Emteq says OCOsense has six optical OCO sensors, three proximity sensors, a 9-axis IMU and a pressure sensor (altimeter). It reports 97 percent accuracy for smiles, brow raises, frowns and squints, and F1 scores of 91 percent (controlled) and 88 percent (real life) for detecting chewing.[19] In a 2023 Frontiers in Psychiatry study of 75 adults (38 with depression, 37 controls), participants watched 25 short video clips chosen for emotional content while wearing OCOsense glasses. The participants with depression showed significantly reduced facial muscle activation during videos they rated as negative or as high arousal.[20]

According to IEEE Spectrum, Sense has nine optical sensors in its rims that read the muscles around the eyes and the jaw at up to 6,000 times per second. The magazine also reported that the glasses weigh 62 g, that a downward-facing camera with OpenAI's GPT-4 model identifies food, and that the sensors detected changes in facial expression with more than 93 percent accuracy when paired with Emteq's current software.[15] Emteq says Sense measures expressions, eating habits, mood, posture, attention and physical activity.[2]

XR work

Emteq began as a VR company. Faceteq was built to give VR users expressive avatars and to capture emotional responses from the facial muscles covered by the headset, which camera-based face tracking systems of the time did not register.[1][4] The emteqPRO was a research tool for measuring physiological and emotional responses in VR studies. Emteq's headset-mounted EMG and PPG sensors were used in its Science Museum study, and the XR Research Awards it co-organized required entrants to use biosensors.[5][11][10] The company's later glasses-focused work keeps an XR link. Its 2024 announcement described the company as working on real-time emotion recognition in virtual and augmented environments.[2] In its 2025 offering statement, Emteq Labs Inc. listed XR among the services it planned to expand into. It also said it planned to license its technology to OEMs and AR/VR device makers, with avatars and telepresence among the planned licensing areas.[16]

Current status

As of October 2026, Companies House lists Emteq Limited as active. Its most recent accounts were made up to 31 July 2025, and its latest confirmation statement was dated 17 June 2026. Its directors are Charles Nduka, Steen Strand and Craig Lucas Goodfellow.[7][8] In its June 2025 offering statement, Emteq Labs Inc. reported no revenue for its fiscal year ended July 2024 and said that a successful launch of Sense depended on finishing its product development milestones.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Jonathan Tustain (2016-09-08). "Emteq Aims to Humanize VR by Capturing Your Facial Expressions". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/emteq-aims-to-humanize-vr-by-capturing-your-facial-expressions/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "Emteq Labs Unveils World's First Emotion-Sensing Eyewear". GlobeNewswire. Emteq Labs. 2024-10-15. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/10/15/2963261/0/en/Emteq-Labs-Unveils-World-s-First-Emotion-Sensing-Eyewear.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Emteq Labs". Sussex Innovation. https://www.sussexinnovation.co.uk/success-stories/emteq-labs/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Jamie Feltham (2016-10-27). "Emteq's Facial Tracking For VR Reads Your Muscle Impulses And More". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/emteq-facial-tracking/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Michal Gnacek, John Broulidakis, Ifigeneia Mavridou, Mohsen Fatoorechi, Ellen Seiss, Theodoros Kostoulas, Emili Balaguer-Ballester, Ivana Kiprijanovska, Claire Rosten, Charles Nduka (2022-03-11). "emteqPRO - Fully Integrated Biometric Sensing Array for Non-Invasive Biomedical Research in Virtual Reality". Frontiers in Virtual Reality, vol. 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2022.781218. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Introduction - emteqPRO". Emteq Labs Support Docs. https://support.emteqlabs.com/02_emteqpro/02_getting-started/introduction.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "EMTEQ LIMITED overview - Company number 09708880". Companies House. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09708880. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "EMTEQ LIMITED officers - Company number 09708880". Companies House. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09708880/officers. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Research Demos". IEEE VR 2017. https://ieeevr.org/2017/program/demos.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Announcing Winners of the 50,000 XR Research Awards and Open Call for New Applicants". GlobeNewswire. 2022-01-13. https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/01/13/2366537/0/en/Announcing-Winners-of-the-50-000-XR-Research-Awards-and-Open-Call-for-New-Applicants.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Affect Detection Virtual Reality study at the Science Museum London". Emteq Labs. 2023-01-26. https://www.emteqlabs.com/blog/affect-detection-virtual-reality-study-at-the-science-museum-london. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  12. ↑ "Best Demo Award at Ubicomp/ISWC for Emteq Labs's OCOSense smart glasses". Emteq Labs. 2022-09-22. https://www.emteqlabs.com/blog/best-demo-award-at-ubicomp-iswc-for-emteq-labss-ocosense-smart-glasses. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  13. ↑ Ifigeneia Mavridou, James Archer, Andrew Cleal, Mohsen Fatoorechi, Simon Stankoski, Ivana Kiprijanovska, John Broulidakis, Martin Gjoreski, Charles Nduka, Hristijan Gjoreski (2022). "OCOsense Glasses for Facial Expressions Recognition and Contextual Affective Computing in Real World and Augmented Reality". Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp/ISWC 2022), pp. 81-84. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544793.3560325. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Emteq Labs unveils OCOsense, A new platform that unlocks the power of facial and movement analytics in every-day life". Emteq Labs. 2023-06-22. https://www.emteqlabs.com/blog/emteq-labs-unveils-ocosense. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Gwendolyn Rak (2024-10-15). "Emteq's Eyewear Detects Emotions, Could Monitor Health". IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/glasses-health-tech. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 "Form C offering statement - Emteq Labs Inc.". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 2025-06-17. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2067222/000206722225000001/EmteqFormC.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  17. ↑ "Form C-U progress update - Emteq Labs Inc.". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 2025-12-10. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2067222/000187285625000057/xslC_X01/primary_doc.xml. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  18. ↑ James Archer, Ifigeneia Mavridou, Simon Stankoski, M. John Broulidakis, Andrew Cleal, Piotr Walas, Mohsen Fatoorechi, Hristijan Gjoreski, Charles Nduka (2023). "OCOsense Smart Glasses for Analyzing Facial Expressions Using Optomyographic Sensors". IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 18-26. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2023.3276471. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  19. ↑ "Beyond the Lab: How Emteq Labs' OCOsense Smart Glasses Are Transforming Real-World Behavioral Analytics". Emteq Labs. 2025-07-22. https://www.emteqlabs.com/blog/beyond-the-lab-how-emteq-labs-ocosense-tm-smart-glasses-are-transforming-real-world-behavioral-analytics. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  20. ↑ M. John Broulidakis, Ivana Kiprijanovska, Liberty Severs, Simon Stankoski, Martin Gjoreski, Ifigeneia Mavridou, Hristijan Gjoreski, Sophia Cox, Daisy Bradwell, James M. Stone, Charles Nduka (2023-08-08). "Optomyography-based sensing of facial expression derived arousal and valence in adults with depression". Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1232433. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
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