The Coming Age of Empathic Computing

THE COMING AGE OF EMPATHIC COMPUTING

Mark Billinghurst mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au

June 2nd 2016

AWE 2016 Conference Santa Clara, USA

Current AR/VR/Wearable Technology

Applications Enabled

• Gaming • Education • Health • Medicine • Training • Tourism • Etc

Looking to the Future

Empathy

“Seeing with the Eyes of another,

Listening with the Ears of another,

and Feeling with the Heart of another..”

Alfred Adler

Empathic Computing

1. Understanding: Systems that can understand your feelings and emotions

2. Experiencing: Systems that help you better experience the world of others

3. Sharing: Systems that help you better share the experience of others

Sensors

VR

AR

1. Understanding: Affective Computing

• Ros Picard – MIT Media Lab • Systems that recognize emotion

Example: Affectiva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QDMNPhMJI4

2. Experiencing: Virtual Reality

"Virtual reality offers a whole different medium to tell stories that really connect people and create an empathic connection."

Nonny de la Peña http://www.emblematicgroup.com/

Using VR for Empathy

• USC Project Syria (2014) • Experience of Terrorism • Project Homeless (2015)

• Experience of Homelessness

Project Homeless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=SSLG8auUZKc

CHILDHOOD (Siggraph 2015)

• Kenji Suzuki, University of Tsukuba • What does it feel like to be a child? • VR display + moved cameras + hand restrictors

CHILDHOOD Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3OghiKZxz4

Sharing: Augmented Reality

Can we develop systems that allow us to share what we are seeing, hearing and feeling with others?

Empathy Glasses (CHI 2016)

• Combine together eye-tracking, display, face expression •  Impicit cues – eye gaze, face expression

+ +

Pupil Labs Epson BT-200 AffectiveWear

Masai, K., Sugimoto, M., Kunze, K., & Billinghurst, M. (2016, May). Empathy Glasses. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.

AffectiveWear – Emotion Glasses

• Photo sensors to recognize expression • User calibration • Machine learning • Recognizing 8 face expressions

Empathy Glasses in Use

• Eye gaze pointer and remote pointing •  Face expression display •  In future integrated eye-tracking/display

Empathy Glasses Demo

Lessons Learned • Pointing really helps in remote collaboration

• Makes remote user feel more connected

• Gaze looks promising • Shows context of what person talking about • Establish shared understanding/awareness

• Face expression • Used as an implicit cue to show comprehension

• Limitations •  Limited implicit cues •  Task was a poor emotional trigger • AffectiveWear needs improvement

Empathic VR Environments

• Player and Viewer •  Viewer slaved to player

• Share emotional signals •  Heart rate, GSR

• Remote affect measuring

Demo: Empathic VR

AR and VR for Empathic Computing • VR systems are ideal for trying experiences:

• Strong story telling medium • Provide total immersion/3D experience • Easy to change virtual body scale and representation

• AR systems are idea for live sharing: • Allow overlay on real world view/can share viewpoints • Support remote annotation/communication • Enhance real world task

Conclusions • Trend towards Empathic Computing

• Understanding, Experiencing, Sharing

• AR/VR Enables Empathic Experiences • Changes perspective • Sharing space/experience • Supports annotation/communication

• Many directions for future research

www.empathiccomputing.org

@marknb00

mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au