Affective Multimodal Interaction With A 3d Agent

Lars Qvortrup The world of interactive 3D multimedia is a cross-institutional world. Here, researchers from media studies, linguistics, dramaturgy, media technology, 3D modelling, robotics, computer science, sociology etc. etc. meet. In order not to create a new tower of Babel, it is important to develop a set of common concepts and references. This is the aim of the first section of the book. In Chapter 2, Jens F. Jensen identifies the roots of interaction and interactivity in media studies, literature studies and computer science, and presents definitions of interaction as something going on among agents and agents and objects, and of interactivity as a property of media supporting interaction. Similarly, he makes a classification of human users, avatars, autonomous agents and objects, demon strating that no universal differences can be made. We are dealing with a continuum. While Jensen approaches these categories from a semiotic point of view, in Chapter 3 Peer Mylov discusses similar isues from a psychological point of view. Seen from the user's perspective, a basic difference is that between stage and back-stage (or rather: front-stage), i. e. between the real "I" and "we" and the virtual, representational "I" and "we". Focusing on the computer as a stage, in Chapter 4 Kj0lner and Lehmann use the theatre metaphor to conceptualize the stage phenomena and the relationship between stage and front-stage.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 1st International Conference on A?ective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2005) held in Beijing, China, on 22–24 October 2005. Traditionally, the machine end of human–machine interaction has been very passive, and certainly has had no means of recognizing or expressing a?ective information. But without the ability to process such information, computers cannot be expected to communicate with humans in a natural way. The ability to recognize and express a?ect is one of the most important features of - man beings. We therefore expect that computers will eventually have to have the ability to process a?ect and to interact with human users in ways that are similar to those in which humans interact with each other. A?ective computing and intelligent interaction is a key emerging technology that focuses on m- iad aspects of the recognition, understanding, and expression of a?ective and emotional states by computers. The topic is currently a highly active research area and is receiving increasing attention. This strong interest is driven by a wide spectrum of promising applications such as virtual reality, network games, smart surveillance, perceptual interfaces, etc. A?ective computing and intelligent interaction is a multidisciplinary topic, involving psychology, cognitive science, physiology and computer science. ACII 2005 provided a forum for scientists and engineers to exchange their technical results and experiences in this fast-moving and exciting ?eld. A total of 45 oral papers and 82 poster papers included in this volume were selected from 205 c- tributionssubmittedbyresearchersworldwide.

This book provides an overview of state of the art research in Affective Computing. It presents new ideas, original results and practical experiences in this increasingly important research field. The book consists of 23 chapters categorized into four sections. Since one of the most important means of human communication is facial expression, the first section of this book (Chapters 1 to 7) presents a research on synthesis and recognition of facial expressions. Given that we not only use the face but also body movements to express ourselves, in the second section (Chapters 8 to 11) we present a research on perception and generation of emotional expressions by using full-body motions. The third section of the book (Chapters 12 to 16) presents computational models on emotion, as well as findings from neuroscience research. In the last section of the book (Chapters 17 to 22) we present applications related to affective computing.

Language, vision and music: what common cognitive patterns underlie our competence in these disparate modes of thought? Language (natural & formal), vision and music seem to share at least the following attributes: a hierarchical organisation of constituents, recursivity, metaphor, the possibility of self-reference, ambiguity, and systematicity. Can we propose the existence of a general symbol system with instantiations in these three modes or is the only commonality to be found at the level of such entities as cerebral columnar automata? Answers are to be found in this international collection of work which recognises that one of the basic features of consciousness is its MultiModality, that there are possibilities to model this with contemporary technology, and that cross-cultural commonalities in the experience of, and creativity within, the various modalities are significant. With the advent of Intelligent MultiMedia this aspect of consciousness implementation in mind/brain acquires new significance. (Series B)

Since interactions may occur between animals, humans, or computational agents, an interdisciplinary approach which investigates foundations of affective communication in a variety of platforms is indispensable. In the field of affective computing, a collection of research, merging decades of research on emotions in psychology, cognition and neuroscience will inspire creative future research projects and contribute to the prosperity of this emerging field. Affective Computing and Interaction: Psychological, Cognitive and Neuroscientific Perspectives examines the current state and the future prospects of affect in computing within the context of interactions. Uniting several aspects of affective interactions and topics in affective computing, this reference reviews basic foundations of emotions, furthers an understanding of the contribution of affect to our lives and concludes by revealing current trends and promising technologies for reducing the emotional gap between humans and machines, all within the context of interactions.

The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2003 was held on July 2–4, 2003 in Heidelberg, Germany. It was the fourth event in a series that started in 1999 as an AAAI Spring Symposium. In response to the overwhelming success of the 1999 symposium, its organizers decided to turn it into a self-contained event in2000. WiththesupportofIBM,the?rsttwoInternationalSymposiaonSmart Graphics were held at the T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY. The 2003 symposium was supported by the Klaus Tschira Foundation and moved to the European Media Lab in Heidelberg, thus underlining the international character of the Smart Graphics enterprise and its community. The core idea behind these symposia is to bring together researchers and practitioners from the ?eld of computer graphics, arti?cial intelligence, cog- tive psychology, and ?ne art. Each of these disciplines contributes to what we mean by the term “Smart Graphics”: the intelligent process of creating expr- sive and esthetic graphical presentations. While artists and designers have been creating communicative graphics for centuries, arti?cial intelligence focuses on automating this process by means of the computer. While computer graphics provides the tools for creating graphical presentations in the ?rst place, cog- tive sciences contribute the rules and models of perception necessary for the design of e?ective graphics. The exchange of ideas between these four discip- nes has led to many exciting and fruitful discussions, and the Smart Graphics Symposia draw their liveliness from a spirit of open minds and the willingness to learn from and share with other disciplines.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Second Workshop on Multimodal Analyses Enabling Artificial Agents in Human Interaction, MA3HMI 2014, held in Conjunction with INTERSPEECH 2014, in Singapore, Singapore, on September 14th, 2014. The 9 revised papers presented together with a keynote talk were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in two sections: human-machine interaction and dialogs and speech recognition.

This volume brings together the advanced research results obtained by the European COST Action 2102: "Cross Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication". The research published in this book was discussed at the 3rd jointly EUCOGII-COST 2102 International Training School entitled "Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces: Theoretical and Practical Issues ", held in Caserta, Italy, on March 15-19, 2010. The book is arranged into two scientific sections. The 18 revised papers of the first section, "Human-Computer Interaction: Cognitive and Computational Issues", deal with conjectural and processing issues of defining models, algorithms, and strategies for implementing cognitive behavioural systems. The second section, "Synchrony through Verbal and Nonverbal Signals", presents 21 revised lectures that provide theoretical and practical solutions to the modelling of timing synchronization between linguistic and paralinguistic expressions, actions, body movements, activities in human interaction and on their assistance for an effective communication.

Emotion pervades human life in general, and human communication in particular, and this sets information technology a challenge. Traditionally, IT has focused on allowing people to accomplish practical tasks efficiently, setting emotion to one side. That was acceptable when technology was a small part of life, but as technology and life become increasingly interwoven we can no longer ask people to suspend their emotional nature and habits when they interact with technology. The European Commission funded a series of related research projects on emotion and computing, culminating in the HUMAINE project which brought together leading academic researchers from the many related disciplines. This book grew out of that project, and its chapters are arranged according to its working areas: theories and models; signals to signs; data and databases; emotion in interaction; emotion in cognition and action; persuasion and communication; usability; and ethics and good practice. The fundamental aim of the book is to offer researchers an overview of the related areas, sufficient for them to do credible work on affective or emotion-oriented computing. The book serves as an academically sound introduction to the range of disciplines involved – technical, empirical and conceptual – and will be of value to researchers in the areas of artificial intelligence, psychology, cognition and user—machine interaction.