Affective Man-Machine Interface: Unveiling human emotions through biosignals

As is known for centuries, humans exhibit an electrical profile. This profile is altered through various psychological and physiological processes, which can be measured through biosignals; e.g., electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). These biosignals can reveal our emotions and, as such, can serve as an advanced man-machine interface (MMI) for empathic consumer products. However, such a MMI requires the correct classification of biosignals to emotion classes. This chapter starts with an introduction on biosignals for emotion detection. Next, a state-of-the-art review is presented on automatic emotion classification. Moreover, guidelines are presented for affective MMI. Subsequently, a research is presented that explores the use of EDA and three facial EMG signals to determine neutral, positive, negative, and mixed emotions, using recordings of 21 people. A range of techniques is tested, which resulted in a generic framework for automated emotion classification with up to 61.31% correct classification of the four emotion classes, without the need of personal profiles. Among various other directives for future research, the results emphasize the need for parallel processing of multiple biosignals

Subjective image quality as a function of viewing distance, resolution and picture size

This paper describes two experiments concerning the subjective quality of complex scenes. Slide projections were used as stimuli and they were varied in viewing distance, resolution and picture size. The subjective quality Was judged by a group of twenty subjects by means of categorical scaling. The results of the experiments show that the (angular) resolution expressed in periods per degree and the picture angle spanned by the display, each influence the quality independently. Subjective quality increases with resolution, but saturates at a resolution (6 dB cut-off frequency) of approximately 25 periods per degree. There is also a linear relationship between the subjective quality and the logarithm of the picture angle. In the discussion, these results are compared with those of a number of experiments known from the literature. The results are also interpreted in terms of consequences for High-Definition TV

Disintegration of images moving at high velocities

This article investigates the effect of spatial disintegration in moving images at high object velocities: when the visual system interprets the same object in consecutive fields as different entities. For a 50-Hz display this effect is found to roughly occur in the velocity range of 20-45 degrees/s, and to depend marginally on the resolution level of the objects involved. A more important influence is that of the trajectory length of the object: the maximum velocity at which no disintegration occurs is found to depend on it in a linear fashion. A simple model is presented that describes the visual appearance of the disintegration effect as well as explains the data quantitativel