Toward computers that recognize and respond to user emotion

For a long time emotions have been kept out of the deliberate tools of scie nce; scientists have expressed emotion, but no tools could sense and respon d to their affective information. This paper highlights research at the MIT Media Laboratory aimed at giving computers the ability to comfortably sens e, recognize, and respond to the human communication of emotion, especially affective states such as frustration, confusion, interest, distress, anger , and joy. Two main themes of sensing - self-report and concurrent expressi on-are described, together with examples of systems that give users new way s to communicate emotion to computers and, through computers, to other peop le. In addition to building systems that try to elicit and detect frustrati on, our research group has built a system that responds to user frustration in a way that appears to help alleviate it. This paper highlights applicat ions of this research to interface design, wearable computing, entertainmen t, and education, and briefly presents some potential ethical concerns and how they might be addressed.