UK: British university team trying to teach computers to assess how the people using them feel

Record ID: 575155

  • Title: UK: British university team trying to teach computers to assess how the people using them feel
  • Date: 10th February 2011
  • Summary: CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, UK (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF RESEARCH STUDENTS USING A DRIVING SIMULATOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE COMPUTER LAB IAN DAVIES ASSESSING THE STRESS LEVEL OF ANOTHER STUDENT USING THE DRIVING SIMULATOR (SOUNDBITE) (English) IAN DAVIES, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE SAYING: "These sort of systems currently take no account of the mental state of the people using them and maybe it would be a good idea if they did. So, if you are a driver and you are very stressed and you are overloaded with busy traffic and bad weather, maybe it would be a bad idea to let your phone ring. Maybe it would be a good idea to prevent you phone from ringing and alert you later that somebody tried to call you. Maybe it's a bad idea to tell you that you have just taken a wrong turning if you have just taken a wrong turning into five lanes of busy traffic. Maybe it would be better to let you drive half a mile and then alert you. So all these sort of example applications could come out of this." VARIOUS OF TADAS BALTRUSAITIS TESTING SYSTEM THAT LEARNS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS BALTRUSAITIS ON SCREEN AND HIS EXPRESSIONS AND MOVEMENT MAPPED ONTO AN AVATAR (SOUNDBITE) (English) TADAS BALTRUSAITIS, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE SAYING: "If you come up to an information desk, instead of having a real person sitting there you could ask a virtual character for directions and if the virtual character responds to your emotional cues and responds emotionally themselves, if they smile or if they look embarrassed if they don't know something, then that might improve your whole experience, same with various platforms or online shopping, so you could imagine it in various scenarios." LAUREL RIEK EXPLAINING WHAT CHARLES THE ROBOT HEAD IS DOING CHARLES MIMICKING LAUREL RIEK (SOUNDBITE) (English) LAUREL RIEK, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE SAYING: "If you can imagine having a mobility aid in your home that picks you up and carries you to another room or something that helps you brush your teeth if you have become paralysed or are unable to move your arms, umm, these kind of things. The ability to use other types of modalities to communicate beyond speech - perhaps you cant speak so there's another way that you can communicate, that kind of thing. Facilitating that kind of knowledge and understanding is really important for lots of populations of people, so that's the sort of thing that we are looking at as well." VARIOUS OF COMPUTER TRACKING LAUREL'S MOVEMENTS AND MAPPING THAT INFORMATION ONTO CHARLES
  • Embargoed: 25th February 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Quirky,Science / Technology,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA999GLBV4MPFAKEDAOOZDZHIGA
  • Story Text: If your computer knew how you felt it might be able to decide what information you are or not ready to hear, according to a group of British researchers.
    The team, at the University of Cambridge's Computer lab, say computers are very good at performing their functions but fail to take their users feeling into account. So if the car driver is stressed, the sat nav or the car's computer will recognise that.
    "If you are a driver and you are very stressed -- maybe it would be a bad idea to let your phone ring," said Ian Davies, a PhD student in Affective Computing. "Maybe it would be a good idea to prevent you phone from ringing and alert you later that somebody tried to call you," he said.
    Davies is studying the facial expressions and body language of people under stress using a driving simulator but he says the research could have important applications for computers controlling aircraft autopilots or the command and control systems for the emergency services.
    While we communicate with the spoken word, we also learn a lot about how the mood of the person we are talking to from their tone of voice, gestures, posture and facial expressions and the team want to teach computers to do the same.
    The researchers are collaborating with the University's Autism Research Centre, which study's the difficulties that some people have understanding emotions, hoping their insights help to address the same problems in computers.
    Systems under development include one that tracks features on a person's face, calculating the gestures that are being made and inferring emotions from them. It gets it right over 70% of the time, which is as good as most people.
    Other systems analyse body posture and gestures and speech intonation to infer emotions from the way that something is said.
    But merely identifying emotions in others is not enough and the team want computers to express emotions as well so that interacting with a machine becomes a two-way process.
    Two interface systems are in development, one controlling a robotic head and the other, a virtual face, either of which could one day replace a person.
    "If you come up to an information desk, instead of having a real person sitting there you could ask a virtual character for directions and if the virtual character responds to your emotional cues and responds emotionally themselves, if they smile or if they look embarrassed if they don't know something, then that might improve your whole experience," said Tadas Baltrusaitis, as his facial expressions and head movements were being mapped onto an avatar on a screen behind him.
    The robotic head is named after Charles Babbage, the inventor of the computer. Charles sits on Laurel Riek's desk, mimicking her movements as she explains why giving him a certain amount of social intelligence could help us in the future.
    "If you can imagine having a mobility aid in your home that picks you up and carries you to another room or something that helps you brush your teeth if you have become paralysed or are unable to move your arms -- facilitating that kind of knowledge and understanding is really important for lots of people," she said.
    The team say they are making progress but admit that the more subtle an expressions or gesture is, the more difficult it is recognise.
    Computers, welcome to our world.
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