Design Socially Adept Agents.

Human emotions are responses to momentary challenges and opportunities in the social environment that are relevant to a person’s immediate goals. Facial, vocal, and bodily expressions of emotion are functional insofar as they signal the person’s interpretation of their challenges or opportunities and inform others about how to respond.

My current research involves applying theories of dyadic interaction and emotion to human-robot interaction. I’m interested in developing and synthesis computational models that develop from dyadic interaction to social agents. My goal is to enable the design of emotion-adept social agents. When endowed with emotional capabilities, smart agents will offer more rewarding interactions.