Recognizing and Predicting the Impact on Human Emotion (Affect) Using Computing Systems

Emotional intelligence is a clear factor in education [1–3], health care [4], and day to day interaction. With the increasing use of computer technology, computers are interacting with more and more individuals. This interaction provides an opportunity to increase knowledge about human emotion for human consumption, well-being, and improved computer adaptation.

This research makes five main contributions. 1) Construct a method for determining a set of sensor features that can be automatically processed to predict human emotional changes in observed people. 2) Identify principles, algorithms, and classifiers that enable computational recognition of human emotion. 3) Apply this method to an intelligent tutoring system instrumented with sensors. 4) Apply and adapt the method to audio and video sensors for a number of applications such as a) detection of psychological disorders, b) detection of emotional changes in health care providers, c) detection of emotional impact of one person on another during video chat, and/or d) detection of emotional impact of one fictional character on another in a motion picture. 5) Integrate emotional detection technologies so that they can be used in more realistic settings.