Design of affective interface for realizing human-machine empathy

The aim of this study is to construct an affective interface in order to realize human-computer empathy using facial expression. Real-time processing methods for facial expression recognition and synthesis based on research in the field of psychology are described in this paper. In facial expression recognition, 18 feature values are first calculated from the 16 feature points set on the facial organs which are extracted from facial images captured by a color CCD camera. Then, the degrees of the basic six expressions are recognized from feature values by fuzzy estimation. On the other hand, in facial synthesis, the expression to be presented is first converted to facial muscle contraction, then the deformation of skin caused by the contraction on the 3D polygon model is calculated by muscle models, in which the contraction rates and time variations were decided by subjective experiments beforehand. The authors have constructed the prototype systems and have confirmed that the system performed in real time