Towards facial mimicry for a virtual human

Boukricha H, Wachsmuth I. Towards facial mimicry for a virtual human. In: Reichardt D, ed. Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Emotion and Computing - Current Research and Future Impact. 2009: 32-39.Mimicking others’ facial expressions is believed to be important in making virtual humans as more natural and believable. As result of an empirical study conducted with a virtual human a large face repertoire of about 6000 faces arranged in Pleasure Arousal Dominance (PAD-) space with respect to two dominance values (dominant vs. submissive) was obtained. Each face in the face repertoire consists of different intensities of the virtual human’s facial muscle actions called Action Units (AUs), modeled following the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Using this face repertoire an approach towards realizing facial mimicry for a virtual human is topic of this paper. A preliminary evaluation of this first approach is realized with the basic emotions Happy and Angry

Simulating empathy for the virtual human Max

Boukricha H, Becker C, Wachsmuth I. Simulating empathy for the virtual human Max. In: Reichardt D, Levi P, eds. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Emotion and Computing - Current Research and Future Impact. 2007: 23-28.Addressing user’s emotions in human-computer interaction significantly enhances the believability and lifelikeness of virtual humans. Emotion recognition and interpretation is realized in our approach by integrating empathy as a designated process within the agent’s cognitive architecture. In this paper we describe this empathy process which comprises of two interconnected components: a belief-desire-intention (BDI) based cognitive component and an affective component based on the emotion simulation system of the virtual human Max. The application and a preliminary evaluation of this empathy system are reported on in the context of a 3D competitive card game scenario

Supramolecular interactions in clusters of polar and polarizable molecules

We present a model for molecular materials made up of polar and polarizable molecular units. A simple two state model is adopted for each molecular site and only classical intermolecular interactions are accounted for, neglecting any intermolecular overlap. The complex and interesting physics driven by interactions among polar and polarizable molecules becomes fairly transparent in the adopted model. Collective effects are recognized in the large variation of the molecular polarity with supramolecular interactions, and cooperative behavior shows up with the appearance, in attractive lattices, of discontinuous charge crossovers. The mean-field approximation proves fairly accurate in the description of the gs properties of MM, including static linear and non-linear optical susceptibilities, apart from the region in the close proximity of the discontinuous charge crossover. Sizeable deviations from the excitonic description are recognized both in the excitation spectrum and in linear and non-linear optical responses. New and interesting phenomena are recognized near the discontinuous charge crossover for non-centrosymmetric clusters, where the primary photoexcitation event corresponds to a multielectron transfer.Comment: 14 pages, including 11 figure

Staphylococcus aureus Panton-Valentine Leukocidin Is a Very Potent Cytotoxic Factor for Human Neutrophils

The role of the pore-forming Staphylococcus aureus toxin Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) in severe necrotizing diseases is debated due to conflicting data from epidemiological studies of community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (CA-MRSA) infections and various murine disease-models. In this study, we used neutrophils isolated from different species to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of PVL in comparison to other staphylococcal cytolytic components. Furthermore, to study the impact of PVL we expressed it heterologously in a non-virulent staphylococcal species and examined pvl-positive and pvl-negative clinical isolates as well as the strain USA300 and its pvl-negative mutant. We demonstrate that PVL induces rapid activation and cell death in human and rabbit neutrophils, but not in murine or simian cells. By contrast, the phenol-soluble modulins (PSMs), a newly identified group of cytolytic staphylococcal components, lack species-specificity. In general, after phagocytosis of bacteria different pvl-positive and pvl-negative staphylococcal strains, expressing a variety of other virulence factors (such as surface proteins), induced cell death in neutrophils, which is most likely associated with the physiological clearing function of these cells. However, the release of PVL by staphylococcal strains caused rapid and premature cell death, which is different from the physiological (and programmed) cell death of neutrophils following phagocytosis and degradation of virulent bacteria. Taken together, our results question the value of infection-models in mice and non-human primates to elucidate the impact of PVL. Our data clearly demonstrate that PVL acts differentially on neutrophils of various species and suggests that PVL has an important cytotoxic role in human neutrophils, which has major implications for the pathogenesis of CA-MRSA infections

Motivation-based approach to behavior prediction

The design of advanced driver assistance systems always aims at enabling the driver to master today's traffic in a more safe and comfortable way. In order to judge the risks in a situation, the assistance system must be able to predict traffic behavior. Taking into account all possible future situations for the next few seconds is a task which quickly produces a complexity that can hardly be handled. Taking the human driver as a role model for its software-counterpart, we propose a new concept which aims at modeling anticipation by taking the motivations of drivers as a basis. Starting with a set of motivations typical for highway traffic, concrete situation specific goals are derived. A planning component generates the possible and fulfillable plans for all vehicles with respect to the goals. Then, the observed actions of the vehicles around are compared to these plans in order to derive a plausibility for the underlying intentions. Eventually, prediction is performed for plausible behaviors of vehicles, which are always based on a motivation that can be taken as an explanation for it. First results are shown in simulation for highway exit scenarios

Buckling of axially compressed CFRP truncated cones: experimental and numerical investigation

Thin-walled conical structures are widely used in aerospace, offshore, civil and other engineering fields. Parts of space launcher transport systems are one example for the application of conical shells. Buckling of such thin-walled imperfection sensitive structures is a very important phenomenon to be considered during their design phase. Nowadays, the analysts still use empirically based lower-bound methods such as the NASA SP-8007 for cylinders and SP-8019 for cones to calculate the required knock-down factors (KDFs), which do not include important mechanical properties of laminated composite materials, such as the stacking sequence. New design approaches that allow taking full advantage of composite materials are therefore required. The study deals with the buckling experiments on axially compressed, unstiffened carbon fiber– reinforced polymer (CFRP) truncated cones performed by DLR for validation of high-fidelity numerical models. Three geometrically identical cones with different layup were designed, manufactured and tested. Before testing, the thickness of the cones was measured with ultrasonic inspection and the geometry was measured utilizing a 3D scanning system based on photogrammetry. During testing, a digital image correlation system was employed to monitor deformations, strain gage readings and load–shortening data were taken. Modeling of shape mid-surface, thickness and ply piece imperfections are included into the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the test structures, and the experimental results are compared with the FEA results

Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Emotion and Computing – Current Research and Future Impact

current research and future impact Workshop The workshop focuses on the role of affect and emotion in computer systems including the three dimensions: emotion recognition, emotion generation and emotion modeling. Both shallow and deep models of emotion are in the focus of interest. The goal is to provide a forum for the presentation of research as well as of existing and future applications and for lively discussions among researchers and industry. In recent years computer science research has shown increasing efforts in the field of software agents which incorporate emotion. Several approaches have been made concerning emotion recognition, emotion modeling, generation of emotional user interfaces and dialogue systems as well as anthropomorphic communication agents. Motivations for emotional computing are manifold. From a scientific point of view, emotions play an essential role in decision making, as well as in perception and learning. Furthermore, emotions influence rational thinking and therefore should be part of rational agents as proposed by artificial intelligence research. Another focus i