Emotion enhanced multimedia meetings using the concept of virtual space teleconferencing

Abstract

We investigate the unique advantages of our proposed virtual space teleconferencing system (VST) in the area of multimedia teleconferencing, with emphasis on facial emotion transmission and recognition. We show that, using this concept, emotions of a local participant can be transmitted to the remote party with a higher recognition rate by enhancing the emotions using some intelligence processing between the local and the remote participants. This leads to a kind of emotion enhanced teleconferencing system which can supersede face to face meetings, by effectively alleviating the barriers in recognizing emotions between different nations. We consider a concept known as a virtual person, which is a better alternative to blurred or mosaic facial images that one can find in some television interviews with people who are not willing to be exposed in public.