Issues in emotion-oriented computing – towards a shared understanding

Emotion-oriented computing is a broad research area involving many disciplines. The network of excellence HUMAINE is currently making a co-ordinated effort to come to a shared understanding of the issues involved, and to propose exemplary research methods in the various areas. This overview paper presents a proposed “map” of the research area, distinguishing core technologies from application-oriented and psychologically oriented work. Current research issues in the various areas are briefly outlined, and references for further reading are given. 1 A map of research in emotion-oriented computing Creating competent emotion-oriented systems is a large scale challenge. The European Network of Excellence HUMAINE (HUman-MAchine Interaction Network on Emotions) was established to prepare the scientific and technological ground for this task, with funding from the EU IST programme from 2004 to 2007. A first challenge was to agree on a suitable dissection into thematic areas and to determine their links [1]. Figure 1 summarizes our current understanding. The central column represents the areas where purely technological challenges loom largest. Detection and synthesis are distinguished because the background technologies used are very different. ‘Planning action’ involves modelling action patterns that might be expected in a particular emotional state, either for driving an artificial agent or for anticipating a human’s action tendencies in a given state. The left hand column deals with issues where application is most obviously of concern. Emotion-related usability issues are more difficult to address than task-oriented ones, because emotional responses are subtle and easily disrupted by interventions that are meant to measure them. Iterative user-centered design methods are used for tuning a system to non-rational preferences and dispositions in the user. Work on emotion in complex media is treated separately because the perspective towards applications in the relatively near future requires a different approach than the core technologies in the central column. The right hand column contains the sub-areas with the strongest roots in psychology. We distinguish theory and empirical data, because existing theory is informed by different kinds of data than what seems relevant for emotionoriented computing. As a result, there are creative tensions between that kind of