Support of Virtual Human Interactions Based on Facial Emotion Recognition Software

ABSTRACT

Emotion recognition based on facial expressions is an increasingly important area in Human-Computer Interaction Research. Despite the many challenges of computer-based facial emotion recognition like, e.g., the huge variability of human facial features, cultural differences, and the differentiation between primary and secondary emotions, there are more and more systems and approaches focusing on facial emotion recognition. These technologies already offer many possibilities to automatically recognize human emotions. As part of a research project described in this paper, these technologies are used to investigate whether and how they can support virtual human interactions. More and more meetings are taking place virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the advancing digitalization. Therefore, the face of the attendees is often the only visible part that indicates emotional states. This paper focuses on outlining why emotions and their recognition are important and in which areas the use of automated emotion detection tools seems to be promising. We do so by showing potential use cases for visual emotion recognition in the professional environment. In a nutshell, the research project aims to investigate whether facial emotion recognition software can help to improve self-reflection on emotions and the quality and experience of virtual human interactions. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.