Towards a full emotional system

The present paper proposes a system both able to classify a facial expression in one of the six universal categories namely: (Joy, Disgust, Anger, Sadness, Fear and Surprise) and to assign to each expression its intensity in the range: (High, Medium and Low). This is carried out in two independent and parallel processes. Permanent and transient facial features are detected from still images and pertinent information, about the presence of transient features on specific facial regions and about facial distances computed from permanent facial features, is extracted. Both classification and quantification processes are based on transient and permanent features. The belief theory is used with the two processes because of its ability in fusing data coming from different sensors. The system outputs a recognized and quantified expression. The quantification process allows recognizing a new subset of expressions deduced from the basic ones. Indeed, by associating to each universal expression three intensities low, medium and high we deduce three facial expressions. Finally a set of eighteen facial expressions is categorized instead of the six universal ones. Experimental results are given to show the classification accuracy of the system.