IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Automatic Emotion Assessment through Biometric Information
J. Teixeira 1 , V. Vinhas 1
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto,
Portugal.
LIACC – Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory
Porto, Portugal
{teixeira.jorge, vasco.vinhas}@fe.up.pt
While affective computing and the entertainment industry still maintain a substantial gap
between themselves, biosignals are subject of digital acquisition through low budget
technologic solutions at neglectable invasive levels preventing users from focusing their
awareness in the equipment. Having this macrocontextualization in mind, the presented
project has the main intention of using emotion assessment through biosignals to promote
both subconscious interaction and individual specific appropriate content delivery.
The proposed system constitutes a solid technologic framework that intends to enable
biological information acquisition in a controlled environment having as initial hypothesis
the existence of human physical expression of emotional states that can be objectively
measured by relatively inexpensive equipment. The integration of electroencephalography,
galvanic skin response and oximeter in a multichannel framework constitutes an effort in
the path to identify emotional states via biosignals expression [1]. The flexibility of this
system is one of the most important characteristics so that it enables the integration of a
diversity of biometric equipment in order to improve the quality of the emotions’
assessment. In order to guarantee the control of the induced emotional states and optimize
the biometric equipments available, the induction through visual stimuli [2] was the most
suitable method for this project, so that gender specific sessions stratified accordingly to its
valence value [3] were defined based on the International Affective Picture System [4].
The experimental conditions were performed in a controlled environment under very
restricted exclusion criteria [5]. An automatic emotions’ assessment toll is able to gather
the pre-processed and analyzed biometric information and identify the emotional states
triggered by the visual stimuli. The attained success levels concerning relating emotions to
biosignals are extremely encouraging not only to the continuation of this research topic but
also to the application of these results in domains such as multimedia entertainment,
advertising and medical treatments.
References:
[1] K. Ishino, M. H. (2003). A feeling estimation system using a simple electroencephalograph. In
Proceedings of 2003 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pages
4204–4209.
[2] G. Chanel, J. Kronegg, D. G. (2005). Emotion assessment: Arousal evaluation using EEG’s
and peripheral physiological signals. In Technical Report.
[3] L. Aftanas, N. R. (2006). Neurophysiological correlates of induced discrete emotions in
humans: An individually oriented analysis. In Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, vol 36.
[4] P.J. Lang, M. Bradley, B. C. (2005). International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective
ratings of pictures and instruction manual. In Technical Report. University of Florida
[5] R. Paul, C. C. (2005). Age-dependent change in executive function and gamma 40 hz phase
synchrony. In Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, volume 4, pages 63–76.
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