Cultural dialects of real and synthetic emotional facial expressions

In this article we discuss the aspects of designing facial expressions for virtual humans (VHs) with a specific culture. First we explore the notion of cultures and its relevance for applications with a VH. Then we give a general scheme of designing emotional facial expressions, and identify the stages where a human is involved, either as a real person with some specific role, or as a VH displaying facial expressions. We discuss how the display and the emotional meaning of facial expressions may be measured in objective ways, and how the culture of displayers and the judges may influence the process of analyzing human facial expressions and evaluating synthesized ones. We review psychological experiments on cross-cultural perception of emotional facial expressions. By identifying the culturally critical issues of data collection and interpretation with both real and VHs, we aim at providing a methodological reference and inspiration for further research

On the parametrization of clapping

For a Reactive Virtual Trainer(RVT), subtle timing and lifelikeness\ud of motion is of primary importance. To allow for reactivity, movement\ud adaptation, like a change of tempo, is necessary. In this paper we\ud investigate the relation between movement tempo, its synchronization to\ud verbal counting, time distribution, amplitude, and left-right symmetry of\ud a clapping movement. We analyze motion capture data of two subjects\ud performing a clapping exercise, both freely and timed by a metronome.\ud Our findings are compared to existing gesture research and existing biomechanical models. We found that, for our subjects, verbal counting adheres\ud to the phonological synchrony rule. A linear relationship between\ud the movement path length and the tempo was found. The symmetry between\ud the left and the right hand can be described by the biomechanical\ud model of two coupled oscillators

Beszéd a szavakon túl

Az emberi kommunikációban a beszélt nyelven túl nagy jelentősége van az azt kísérő nemverbális jeleknek: arckifejezéseknek, gesztusoknak, a tekintetnek, melyeket mindenképpen figyelembe kell venni virtuális emberek kommunikációjának tervezésekor is. A cikkben áttekintést adunk a nemverbális jelek jelentéséről, fajtáiról, morfológiai jellemzőiről. Az arc mimika lehetséges hatásait két kísérlet eredményeivel illusztráljuk. Majd bemutatjuk a GESTYLE szöveg annotáló nyelvet, melynek segítségével virtuális emberek beszédét kísérő nemverbális jeleket lehet több szinten, nemdeterminisztikus módon definiálni

Robots as Companions: What can we Learn from Servants and Companions in Literature, Theater, and Film?

Many researchers are working on developing robots into adequate partners, be it at the working place, be it at home or in leisure activities, or enabling elder persons to lead a self-determined, independent life. While quite some progress has been made in e.g. speech or emotion understanding, processing and expressing, the relations between humans and robots are usually only short-term. In order to build long-term, i.e. social relations, qualities like empathy, trust building, dependability, non-patronizing, and others will be required. But these are just terms and as such no adequate starting points to “program” these capacities even more how to avoid the problems and pitfalls in interactions between humans and robots. However, a rich source for doing this is available, unused until now for this purpose: artistic productions, namely literature, theater plays, not to forget operas, and films with their multitude of examples. Poets, writers, dramatists, screen-writers, etc. have studied for centuries the facets of interactions between persons, their dynamics, and the related snags. And since we wish for human-robot relations as master-servant relations - the human obviously being the master - the study of these relations will be prominent. A procedure is proposed, with four consecutive steps, namely Selection, Analysis, Categorization, and Integration. Only if we succeed in developing robots which are seen as servants we will be successful in supporting and helping humans through robots

Módszertani tapasztalatok a VoltEgySzer prevenciós alkalmazás pilot kutatásának eredményei alapján

A VoltEgySzer prevenciós mobilalkalmazás hatékonyságvizsgálatának összefoglalója