Affective+Computing

**Affective Computing**

 * Affective computing** is human-computer interaction where a device has the ability to detect and appropriately respond to its user's emotions and other stimuli.

It recognizes, interprets and processes emotions through the collection of facial expressions, posture, gestures, speech, the force or rhythm of key strokes and the temperature changes of the hand on a mouse. A built-in camera captures images of the user and algorithms are used to process the data to yield meaningful information.

Emotion is fundamental to human experience, influencing cognition, perception, and everyday tasks such as learning, communication and rational decision making. However, technologists have largely ignored emotion and createad an often frustrating experience for people in part because affect has been misunderstood and hard to measure.

It is an interdisciplinary field relating to computer science, psychology and cognitive science.

The design of computational devices having either innate emotional capabilities or capable of convincingly simulate emotions. A more practical approach, based on current technological capabilities, is the simulation of emotions in conversational agents. The goal of such simulation is to enrich and facilitate interactivity between human and machine.
 * Emotion in machines**

While emotions are often associated with abstract states associated with progress (or lack of progress) in autonomous learning systems. In this view, affective emotional states correspond to time-deliveries (perturbations) in the learning curve of an arbitrary learning system.

In e-learning applications, affective computing can be used to adjust the presentation of a computerized tutor when a learner is bored, interested, frustrated or pleased. Psychological health services such as counseling can benefit from affective computing applications, for example, when determining a client's emotional state. Affective computing would help in sending a message through colour or sound, which would express a person's state of emotion to other people eliminating unneeded conflicts or changing the moods of that person.
 * Potential appliances**


 * Sources**

http://affect.media.mit.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_computing http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci922555,00.html

Created by: csping