The monitoring of human affective state is a key part of developing responsive and naturally behaving human-robot interaction systems. However, evaluation and calibration of physiologically monitored affective state data is typically done using offline questionnaires and user reports. This paper investigates the potential to use an on-line device to collect user self reports that can be then used to calibrate physiologically generated affective state data. The collection of on-line calibration data is particularly germane to human-robot interaction where the physiological responses of interest include those related to more high frequency affective state events related to arousal (surprise, fear, alarm) as well as the more low frequency events (contentment, boredom, pleasure). In this context, this paper describes the development of an experimental device, and a preliminary study, to answer the question: Can people report, on-line, two degree of freedom continuous affective states using a hand held device suitable for calibration of physiologically obtained signals? In the following paper, we report on both the device design and user trials. Further work, using the device to calibrate existing models of the user’s affective state during human-robot interaction, is ongoing and will be reported at the time of the conference.
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