Fuzzy sets and systems in building closed-loop affective computing systems for human-computer interaction: Advances and new research directions

Affective computing is computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions. It has lots of applications in the next generation of human-computer interfaces. We have proposed a closed-loop affective computing system, which includes affect recognition, affect modeling, and affect control. Because emotions include both intra-personal uncertainty, which is the uncertainty a person has about an emotion, and inter-personal uncertainty, which results from the fact that different people have different perceptions and expressions of the same emotion, it is promising to use fuzzy sets and systems, especially type-2 fuzzy sets and systems, to handle these uncertainties in an affective computing system. This paper introduces four applications of affective computing, reviews some recent advances on the application of fuzzy sets and systems to affect recognition, modeling, and control, and points out some new research directions. It will be very useful to both the fuzzy logic research community and the affective computing research community, especially to researchers working at the intersection of these two areas.