HUMAINE Summer School - September Basic Emotions from Body Movements HUMAINE Summer School 2006 Casa Paganini Genova, Italy Ahmad S. Shaarani The Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield, UK Supervisor: Dr. Daniela M. Romano

HUMAINE Summer School - September Scope of Research Basic Body Movements Emotional Expression Plan Experiment Conclusion Overview

HUMAINE Summer School - September Scope of Research Psychology tries to discover the nature of emotions and personality. Computer Science tries to simulate the effect that those have on human being and use it to make HCI more natural. (Nadia, 2005) The research that is part of HCI + emotion  naturalness is called Affective Computing (Picard, 1997). Research Area  Affective Computing & Believable Characters

HUMAINE Summer School - September Natural interface with machine - identify humans’ cues - interpret from whole body movement Scope of Research Believable Characters Virtual humans are plausible and believable to be perceived by the users. Should reflect the simulated situation like the users expect them to do. It is why a concrete understanding of humans behaviour is needed. Why virtual human?

HUMAINE Summer School - September Basic Body Movements Basic emotions from facial expression have an agreed meaning across and within cultures (Ekman, 1999) “The first cues perceived by an individual when others are approaching are embedded in body movements and gestures” (Montepare, 1999) (Wallbott, 1998) has study the use of body movement, posture and gesture as cues to the emotional state of individuals. “Knees will shake and hands will tremble when someone experience fear” (Richmond & McCrosky, 2000) Coulson (2004) conducted a study designed to investigate the attribution of emotion to static body postures using a mannequin figures.

HUMAINE Summer School - September Emotional Body Movements  to recognize, understand and model human emotion. How humans understand emotions? Language & Sound of the voice Non-verbal communication Context Non-verbal communication  Facial expressions, body posture & body movements Emotional Expression

HUMAINE Summer School - September This project is concern with capturing the emotional cues of non-verbal communication of the body. Emotional Expression Why non-verbal communication? Non-verbal communication is the medium through which a virtual human can convey an emotional state. It is the means through which to achieve certain expression. User normally have a specific expectation of how a virtual human should behave or respond in any given situation.

HUMAINE Summer School - September Emotional Expression - LMA Clear description of emotion. Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Find out some characteristic of general movement features and use it as a unit to be analysed. Body  which body part are move, where the movements are initiate and how the movement spread. Space  how large the mover kinesphere. Shape  changing forms that the body makes in space. Effort  Dynamic qualities of movement / inner attitude towards using energy. Four major components in LMA are Body, Space, Shape and Effort (Laban, 1960).

HUMAINE Summer School - September Experiment Identify cues of humans’ movement. Create 3D animated virtual human that expressing quality body movements of certain basic emotions. Conduct a survey to analyse users perception and acceptance of expressive movement. Analyse the data using statistical analysis.

HUMAINE Summer School - September example of still images

HUMAINE Summer School - September Conclusion This research try to relate the parameters for movement of the whole body to basic emotion. Focus on Ekman’s six basic emotions. Identify cues of humans’ movement. Create believable virtual human that are able to express emotions in a manner that is recognise by humans’ spectators. Analyse users perception and acceptance using statistical analysis.

HUMAINE Summer School - September