Agnieszka Landowska

Michal R Wrobel, Agnieszka Landowska, Karolina Makuch

The paper concerns affective information systems that represent and visualize human emotional states. The goal of the study was to find typical representations of discrete and dimensional emotion models in terms of color, size, speed, shape, and animation type. A total of 419 participants were asked about their preferences for emotion visualization. We found that color, speed, and size correlated with selected discrete emotion labels, while speed correlated with arousal in a dimensional model. This study is a first step towards defining a universal emotion representation for use in information systems.

Michal R. Wrobel, Duygun Erol Barkana, Agnieszka Landowska

Although pervasive sensing technologies are increasingly capable of continuously detecting human emotional states, there is still a critical challenge: how to unobtrusively communicate this sensed data back to the user. Realistic avatars are effective but often unsuitable for the limited screen space and peripheral nature of wearable. Abstract geometric animation offers a promising, rapidly interpretable alternative, but its cross-cultural validity remains under-explored. This study investigates the universality of animated emotion representations. We conducted a comparative study with 105 participants from Poland and Turkey and analyzed how they map emotions to visual parameters, such as color, shape, size, speed, and animation type. The results indicate that color and object size are universally understood as carriers of emotional meaning, making them suitable for global visualization models. However, some cultural variation in dynamic range preferences was revealed by animation speed. These results lay the groundwork for developing generative visualization algorithms that translate continuous sensor data into intuitive, culturally relevant feedback for pervasive environments.

Pinar Uluer, Hatice Kose, Agnieszka Landowska et al.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affected our lives deeply, just like everyone else, the children also suffered from the restrictions due to COVID-19 affecting their education and social interactions with others, being restricted from play areas and schools for a long time. Although social robots provide a promising solution to support children in their education, healthcare and social interaction with others, the precautions due to COVID-19 also introduced new constraints in the social robotics research. In this paper, we will discuss the benefits and challenges encountered in child-robot interaction due to COVID-19 based on two user studies. The first study involves children with hearing disabilities, and Pepper humanoid robot to support their audiometry tests. The second study includes the child-sized humanoid robot Kaspar and interaction games with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).