Research has shown that emotions play an integral role in decision making, cognition, perception, learning and more. If we want our computers to be intelligent and be able to interact with us we need to ensure that they are able to recognize, understand and express emotions. This is the basic assumption of the field of Affective Computing. In this talk I will give an overview of Affective computing and how it can be applied in order to make our interaction with machines more suitable to us as humans.

First I will give an introduction to the field starting with established findings from the field of psychology on how we best can measure emotions.

Then I will describe how the field of Affective Computing has transformed from its origin in the 90’s until now when it is an established research field. I will highlight some of the technology enablers that has made Affective Computing a hot topic nowadays and give some examples of API and services that we as developers can use as of today.

In the second part of my talk I will give some examples on application scenarios across various fields (retail, medical, education and social). After that I will be show casing what is in the front line now. I will conclude my presentation with some recommendations on how this affects us as developers going forward.