A Blueprint for Affective Computing: A Sourcebook and Manual

'Affective computing' is a branch of computing concerned with the theory and construction of machines which can detect, respond to, and simulate human emotional states. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning the computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science. Affective computing is a rapidly developing field within industry and science. There is now a great drive to make technologies such as robotic systems, avatars in service-related human computer interaction, e-learning, game characters, or companion devices more marketable by endowing the 'soulless' robots or agents with the ability to recognize and adjust to the user's feelings as well as to be able to communicate appropriate emotional signals.

A Blueprint for Affective Computing: A sourcebook and manual is the very first attempt to ground affective computing within the disciplines of psychology, affective neuroscience, and philosophy. This book illustrates the contributions of each of these disciplines to the development of the ever-growing field of affective computing. In addition, it demonstrates practical examples of cross-fertilization between disciplines in order to highlight the need for integration of computer science, engineering and the affective sciences.

Focusing on a topic at the frontiers of human computer interaction research, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers in psychology, neuroscience, computational neuroscience, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

Klaus Scherer, born in 1943, studied economics and social sciences at the University of Cologne and the London School of Economics. Following his postgraduate studies in psychology, he obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1970. After teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and the University of Kiel, Germany, he was appointed, in 1973, full professor of social psychology at the University of Giessen, Germany. From 1985 to 2008, Klaus Scherer has held the chair of emotion psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, with teaching and research activities focussing on the areas of emotion, stress, motivation, personality, and organisational behaviour.

Klaus Scherer is currently the Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research for the Affective Sciences, established by the Swiss government and the Swiss National Science Foundation, and of its leading house at the University of Geneva, the Interfaculty Centre for Affective Sciences.

Tanja Banziger studied psychology in Switzerland (Lausanne and Geneva). She obtained a PhD in the

vocal communication of emotion in 2004. For her post-doc she worked on the recognition of emotion

in face and voice. She currently teaches at Hogskola i Gavle.

Dr. Roesch started as a professional software engineer, before completing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in cognitive science. He completed his undergraduate research track record by joining the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, at Harvard University, as a Research Assistant. In 2004, he joined Prof. Scherer's lab to pursue a PhD in psychology investigating the unfolding of attentional resource to the processing of emotionally-relevant information. In 2008, he was awarded a fellowship by the Swiss National Science Foundation to join the Computing Dept. at Imperial College, where he contributed to the development of NeMo, a modelling platform of spiking neurons using high-performance Graphics Processing Units (GPU). In 2010, he joined the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, on a project aiming at bridging the gaps between neuroimaging and modelling. Dr. Roesch is also an associate lecturer in Oxford Brookes University, where he teaches cognitive neuroscience.

Preface, Scherer, KR, Banziger, T, Roesch E.B.

Theoretical approaches to the study of emotion in humans and machines

Introduction

1.1. Emotion and emotional competence: conceptual and theoretical issues for modeling, Scherer, K.R.

1.2. Computational models of emotion, Marsella, S., Gratch, J., Petta, P.

The emotion process: Perspectives from psychology and the neurosciences

Introduction

2.1. The component process model: a blueprint for a comprehensive computational model of emotion, Scherer, KR

2.2. The emotional brain meets affective computing, Grandjean D., Sander, D.

2.3. The face and voice of emotions: the expressions of emotions, Banziger, T, With, S., Kaiser, S

2.4. Psychological response patterning in emotion: implications for affective computing, Kreibig, S., Schaefer, G., Brosch, T.

2.5. Emotions in interpersonal interactions, Parkinson, B

Emotional expression: Ground truth and agent evaluation

Introduction

3.1. The essential role of human databases for learning in and validation of affectively competent agents, Cowie, R., Douglas-Cowie, E., Martin, J.-C-, Devillers, L.

3.2. On the use of actor portrayals in research on emotional expression, Scherer, KR. & Banziger, T.

Approaches to the computational modelling of emotion

Introduction

4.1. WASABI as a case study of how misattribution of emotion can be modelled computationally, Becker-Asano, C., Wachsmuth, I.

4.2. Emotions in artificial neural networks, Roesch, EB, Korsten, N, Fragopanagos, N., Taylor, JG

Approaches to the implementation of emotionally competent agents

Introduction

5.1. Expression of affects in Embodied Conversational Agents, Hyniewska, S., Niewiadomski, R., Mancini, M., Pelachaud, C.

5.2. Synthesis of emotional speech, Schroder, M., Burkhardt, F., Krstulovic, S.

5.3. Automatic detection of emotion from vocal expression, Devillers, L., Vidrascu, L., Layachi, O.

5.4. Body gesture and facial expression analysis for automatic affect recognition, Castellano, G., Caridakis, G., Camurri, A., Karpouzis, K., Volpe, G., Kollias, S.

5.5. Communicating emotional states with the Greta agent, Niewiadomski, R., Mancini, M., Hyniewska, S., Pelachaud, C.

Approaches to developing expression corpora and databases

Introduction

6.1. Introducing the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayal (GEMEP) corpus, Banziger, T & Scherer, KR

6.2. Induction techniques developed to illuminate relationships between signs of emotion and their context, physical and social., Cowie, R., Douglas-Cowie, E., Sneddon, I., McRorie, Hanratty, J., McMahon, E. ,McKeown, G.

Conclusions