Introduction to the thematic issue on Affect Aware Ubiquitious Computing

Abstract

The growth of embedded and networked enabled physical devices collectively termed as the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) has become an enabler for facilitating richer context awareness, personalisation through integration of intelligence, into everyday consumer devices. The global IoT market is expected to hit $7.1 trillion by 2020 (IDC) and is projected to drive the circulation and use of some 50 billion connected devices. This influx of personal, mobile and wearable devices will open up many new research opportunities focusing on human centered technology with a particular focus on extending the contextual sensing and smart processing capabilities of ubiquitous systems and smart environments. Consequentially there will be need for researchers and industry to develop more unobtrusive and natural communication between computing artefacts and users to make pervasive systems more aware and reactive to their feelings, moods and desires. Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions” (R. Picard, MIT Media Lab). Practical applications of Affective Computing (AC) based systems seek to achieve a positive impact on our everyday lives by monitoring, recognising and acting on our emotions, physiological signals, speech, facial expressions and gestures. Integrating these sensing modalities into intelligent pervasive computing systems will reveal a far richer picture of how our fleeting emotional responses, changing moods, feelings and sensations, such as pain, touch,