Search for 'human computer'

Team believes computers would play major role in learning

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 co-ordinated 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.

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 Professor Roddy Cowie Programme co-ordinator

The HUMAINE project is funded on a 50-50 basis by the European Commission and the institutions.

Programme co-ordinator 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 though 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.