Communication error detection using facial expressions

Automatic detection of communication errors in conversational systems typically rely only on acoustic cues. However, perceptual studies have indicated that speakers do exhibit visual communication error cues passively during the system's conversational turn. In this thesis, we introduce novel algorithms for face and body gesture recognition and present the first automatic system for detecting communication errors using facial expressions during the system's turn. This is useful as it detects communication problems before the user speaks a reply. To detect communication problems accurately and efficiently we develop novel extensions to hidden-state discriminative methods. We also present results that show when human subjects become aware that the conversational system is capable of receiving visual input, they become more communicative visually yet naturally.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Sy Bor, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Trevor J. Darrell and David Demirdjian.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45881

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45881