A Northern Ireland team is leading the search for a thinking computer which can sense a user's mood.

Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast hope to complete the 10m euro project for an emotion-sensitive computer within four years.

The aim is to enable computers to think and behave more like humans.

The European-wide project is being coordinated from the university's School of Psychology and involves 160 researchers from 27 institutions.

The university's researchers developed the proposal and negotiated the contract with the European Commission.

The academics said the work would build upon attempts to create "multi-modal interfaces" which allow machines to sense and respond to the moods of the user.

Programme coordinator Professor Roddy Cowie said while it sounded like science fiction, computers which responded to human emotion would emerge.

"At the moment, our use of computers is limited by the fact that we need a keyboard and a screen to access them," he said.

"It would make an enormous difference if we could interact with them by speaking normally - perhaps through a microphone and a transmitter in a 'Star Trek' badge.

"But emotion is part of normal speech, and experience has shown that most users are deeply uncomfortable with speech interfaces that ignore it - too uncomfortable to use them very much.

"If we can make computers more intuitive and expressive, and also less challenging to use, there is enormous potential to let people make fuller use of information technology."

The emotion-sensitive computer would have its own "personality" and establish a social relationship with the user.

"It's a fair bet that in 30 years' time, emotion-sensitive interfaces will be as much part of life as windows and mouse interfaces are now," said Professor Cowie.

The project team believes such computers would play a major role in teaching and learning.



北爱尔兰的一个研究小组正在研究一种会思考的电脑，这种电脑能够感知使用者的情绪。
贝尔法斯特女王大学的研究者们希望四年内、花费一千万欧元能够研制出这种具有感知情感功能的电脑。

其目的就是让电脑像人一样思考和活动。

这项遍及整个欧洲的研究项目由女王大学心理学院协调安排，来自27个研究机构的160位研究人员参与了这项工作。

女王大学的研究人员制定了一份方案，并就此与欧盟执行委员会进行了商议。

研究人员们说这项工作试图创建“多种模式的界面”，这种“多种模式的界面”能够使机器感应使用者的情绪。

项目协调人罗迪·考伊教授说虽然这项工作听起来像科幻小说，能根据人类情感做出反应的电脑终将出现。

他说：“目前，我们使用电脑是受到客观限制的，我们只能通过键盘和显示器才能使用电脑。

“如果我们正常说话就可以和电脑沟通，也许是通过类似《星际迷航》中的徽章里隐藏的麦克风和发射器，结果就大不一样了。

“然而情感是正常说话的一部分，经验显示，大多数使用者对那种忽视情感的语言界面都会深感不舒服，以致于都不愿经常使用它们。

“如果我们能让电脑更直观、更善于表达，使用起来也不觉得太难的话，那么人们更加充分利用信息技术的潜力是巨大的。”

能够感知情感的电脑会有它自己的“个性”，并且能与使用者建立一种社会关系。

考伊教授说：“很可能在未来30年的时间里，能够感知情感的界面将会像目前的视窗与鼠标界面一样成为我们日常生活的重要部分。”

这个项目研究小组的全体人员相信这种电脑将会在教学方面起到很重要的作用。