Improved Affect Recognition in Virtual Reality Settings

This Engineering Doctorate (EngD) research project builds on a 2016 to 2020 research collaboration between Emteq Ltd and BU CDE. CDE Research Engineer Ifigenia Mavridou's research findings show that the Emteq VR technology has significant ability to recognise valence and arousal measurements from participants exposed to affective environments. However, processing signals with different temporal characteristics, and subsequently inferring the affective state of a person based on those signals, is a challenging task. This task requires the development of novel algorithms for event detection and signal synchronisation. Furthermore, the relationship between these objective measures of affective states and the feelings of presence and immersion in the VR environment are not fully understood and further work is required on this topic.

The Centre's purpose in the broadest sense is to have an economic impact by training industry-ready researchers to the highest standard.

Our chosen sectors within digital media are ones known to have a shortage of such people. From our previous experience with the Centre's partner companies, we have made significant changes in this Proposal to ensure that we are keeping up with what our graduates need to stay ahead in an internationally-competitive world.

Graduates will be the research leaders of the future, trained in technical, business and venture skills. They will be innovators, in some cases visionaries, and will make a significant high-level contribution to the companies they create or for which they work.