Unobtrusive technique based on infrared thermal imaging for emotion analysis in children-with-ASD-robot interaction

• Autor(a) principal: Goulart, Christiane Mara
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/11157
• topic: Autism spectrum disorder; Emotions; Infrared thermal imaging; Social robot; Transtorno do espectro autista; Emoções; Imageamento térmico infravermelho; Robô social; Biotecnologia; 61

Emotions are relevant for the social relationships, and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have emotion understanding and expression impaired. This thesis consists of studies about emotion analysis in typically developing children and children with ASD (aged between 7 and 12 years), through infrared thermal imaging (IRTI), a safe and unobtrusive (contact-free) technique, used to record temperature variations in facial regions of interest (ROIs), such as forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, periorbital and perinasal regions. A social robot called N-MARIA (New-Mobile Autonomous Robot for Interaction with Autistics) was used as emotional stimulus and mediator for social and pedagogical tasks. The first study evaluated the facial thermal variations for five emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust and surprise), triggered by affective audio-visual stimuli, in typically developing children. The second study evaluated the facial thermal variation for three emotions (happiness, surprise and fear), triggered by the social robot N-MARIA, in typically developing children. In the third study, two sessions were carried out with children with ASD, in which social and pedagogical tasks were evaluated having the robot NMARIA as tool and mediator of the interaction with the children. An emotional analysis through facial thermal variation was possible in the second session, in which the robot was the stimulus to trigger happiness, surprise or fear. Moreover, professionals (teachers, occupational therapist and psychologist) evaluated the usability of the social robot. In general, the results showed IRTI as an efficient technique to evaluate emotions through thermal variations. In the first study, predominant thermal decrements were observed in most ROIs, with the highest emissivity variations induced by disgust, happiness and surprise, and an accuracy greater than 85% for the classification of the five emotions. In the second study, the highest probabilities of emotions detected by the classification system were for surprise and happiness, and a significant temperature increase was predominant in the chin and nose. The third study performed with children with ASD found significant thermal increase in all ROIs and a classification with the highest probability for surprise. N-MARIA was a promising stimulus able to trigger positive emotions in children. The child-with-ASD-and-robot interaction was positive, with social skills and pedagogical tasks successfully performed by the children. In addition, the usability of the robot assessed by professionals achieved great score, indicating N-MARIA as a potential tool for therapies.