Computers That Recognize and Respond to User Emotion

For a long time emotions have been kept out of the deliberate tools of science; scientists have expressed emotion, but no tools could sense and respond to their affective information. This paper highlights research at the MIT Media Laboratory aimed at giving computers the ability to comfortably sense, recognize, and respond to the human communication of emotion, especially affective states such as frustration, confusion, interest, distress, anger, and joy. Two main themes of sensing—self-report and concurrent expression—are described, together with examples of systems that give users new ways to communicate emotion to computers and, through computers, to other people. In addition to building systems that try to elicit and detect frustration, our research group has built a system that responds to user frustration in a way that appears to help alleviate it. This paper highlights applications of this research to interface design, wearable computing, entertainment, and education, and briefly presents some potential ethical concerns and how they might be addressed. N ot all computers need to " pay attention " to emotions or to have the capability to emulate emotion. Some machines are useful as rigid tools, and it is fine to keep them that way. However, there are situations in which human-computer interaction could be improved by having the computer adapt to the user, and in which communication about when, where, how, and how important it is to adapt involves the use of emotional information. suggest that the interaction between human and machine is largely natural and social, 1 indicating that factors important in human-human interaction are also important in human-computer interaction. In human human interaction, it has recently been argued that skills of so-called " emotional intelligence " are more important than are traditional mathematical and verbal skills of intelligence. 2 These skills include the ability to recognize the emotions of another and to respond appropriately to these emotions. Whether or not these particular skills are more important than certain other skills will depend on the situation and goals of the user, but what is clear is that these skills are important in human-human interaction, and when they are missing, interaction is more likely to be perceived as frustrating and not very intelligent. Consider an example of human-human interaction: Suppose that a human starts to give you help at a bad time. You try ignoring, then frowning at, and then maybe glaring at him or her. The savvy …