Affective dialogue systems

Abstract

Human conversational partners usually not only focus on what is being said, but also try to interpret and respond to affective cues that have been conveyed in a dialogue. Several research projects started to simulate emotional behaviors through computer-based dialogue systems in order to enable more human-like styles of communication when humans communicate with machines. Especially in areas where machines can take on the role of assistants, consultants or even companions, the emulation of human affective behaviors might be desirable and necessary. This chapter provides a survey of dialogue systems that simulate certain aspects of human affective behaviors, focusing on the modeling, analysis and synthesis of affective behaviors. It discusses the following research questions: How can affective behaviors be modeled within a machine? To what extent is a machine capable of detecting human affective cues from facial expressions, gestures and speech? What possibilities does a dialogue system have to express affective behaviors as well? How do humans respond to a dialogue system that simulates certain aspects of affective behaviors? In addition to presenting affective computing technologies, we also provide representative examples of affective dialogue systems and discuss to what extent it is possible and desirable to simulate empathic behaviors by a machine.