Do We Understand the Relationship between Affective Computing, Emotion and Context-Awareness?

Historically, the utilization of context, the range and scope of context-aware systems, and the levels of computational intelligence in such systems have been very limited. While the inherent complexity is a significant factor, a principal reason for these limitations lies in the failure to incorporate the emotional component. Affective computing technologies are designed to implement innate emotional capabilities and the capability to simulate emotions and empathy; thus, intelligent context-aware systems with affective computing provide a basis upon which we may effectively enable the emotional component. Moreover, machine cognition relies upon affective computing technologies to provide a basis upon which the emotional component may be incorporated. This paper poses the question: do we understand the relationship between affective computing, emotion and context-awareness? The conclusion drawn is that while affective computing and the need for the incorporation of the emotional component is generally understood and domain-specific strategies to enable implementation have been proposed, there remain important challenges and open research questions in relation to the cognitive modelling and the effective incorporation of affective computing and the emotional component in intelligent context-aware systems.