Facial and Body Feature Extraction for Emotionally-Rich HCI

Abstract

Emotionally-aware Man-Machine Interaction (MMI) systems are presently at the forefront of interest of the computer vision and artificial intelligence communities, since they give the opportunity to less technology-aware people to use computers more efficiently, overcoming fears and preconceptions. Most emotion-related facial and body gestures are considered to be universal, in the sense that they are recognized along different cultures; therefore, the introduction of an “emotional dictionary” that includes descriptions and perceived meanings of facial expressions and body gestures, so as to help infer the likely emotional state of a specific user, can enhance the affective nature of MMI applications (Picard, 2000).