Using facial emotional signals for communication between emotionally expressive avatars in virtual worlds

Abstract

In this paper we explore the applications of facial expression analysis and eye tracking in driving emotionally expressive avatars. We propose a system that transfers facial emotional signals including facial expressions and eye movements from the real world into a virtual world. The proposed system enables us to address the questions: How significant are eye movements in emotion expression? Can facial emotional signals be transferred effectively, from the real world into virtual worlds? We design an experiment to address the questions. There are two major contributions of our work: 1) We propose a system that incorporates eye movements for transferring facial emotions; 2) We design an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the facial emotional signals. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.