Affective computing with primary and secondary emotions in a virtual human

Abstract

We introduce the WASABI 1 Affect Simulation Architecture, in which a virtual human's cognitive reasoning capabilities are combined with simulated embodiment to achieve the simulation of primary and secondary emotions. In modeling primary emotions we follow the idea of "Core Affect" in combination with a continuous progression of bodily feeling in three-dimensional emotion space (PAD space), that is subsequently categorized into discrete emotions. In humans, primary emotions are understood as onto-genetically earlier emotions, which directly influence facial expressions. Secondary emotions, in contrast, afford the ability to reason about current events in the light of experiences and expectations. By technically representing aspects of each secondary emotion's connotative meaning in PAD space, we not only assure their mood-congruent elicitation, but also combine them with facial expressions, that are concurrently driven by primary emotions. Results of an empirical study suggest that human players in a card game scenario judge our virtual human MAX significantly older when secondary emotions are simulated in addition to primary ones.

Developing an emotional-based application for human-agent societies

“…The OCC model designed by Ortony, Clore & Collins is a model frequently used in applications where an emotional state must be simulated. This has allowed to create applications which emulate emotions in virtual humans [3] or applications which incorporate agents reacting to stress situations [17]. The OCC model specifies 22 emotional categories, which are divided into five processes.…”

Empathy and Its Modulation in a Virtual Human

“…The virtual humans MAX [12] and EMMA [6] have a cognitive architecture composed of an emotion simulation module [2] and a Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) module [12]. The emotion simulation module comprises of a dynamics/mood component for the calculation of the course of emotions and moods over time and their mutual interaction, and of a Pleasure, Arousal, Dominance (PAD) space in which emotion categories are located and their intensity values can be calculated.…”

“…Fig. 1: The PA space of positive dominance of the emotion simulation module [2]. Left: empEmo t,mod as lying on the straight line spanned by ownEmo t and empEmo t (cf.…”

“…[2]). The decay function of the modulated empathic emotion is influenced by the degree of empathy, that is, the higher the calculated value of the degree of empathy, the slower the decay.…”

An Event Metric and an Episode Metric for a Virtual Guide

“…Finally, the agent's emotional state is mapped to a 2.5 dimensional representation of the PAD space (Becker-Asano and Wachsmuth, 2010). The maximal expansion from (−100, −100, −100) to (100, 100, 100) is max PAD = 200 √ 3 ≈ 346.41.…”