Social Signal Processing

Social Signal Processing is the first book to cover all aspects of the modeling, automated detection, analysis, and synthesis of nonverbal behavior in human-human and human-machine interactions. Authoritative surveys address conceptual foundations, machine analysis and synthesis of social signal processing, and applications. Foundational topics include affect perception and interpersonal coordination in communication; later chapters cover technologies for automatic detection and understanding such as computational paralinguistics and facial expression analysis and for the generation of artificial social signals such as social robots and artificial agents. The final section covers a broad spectrum of applications based on social signal processing in healthcare, deception detection, and digital cities, including detection of developmental diseases and analysis of small groups. Each chapter offers a basic introduction to its topic, accessible to students and other newcomers, and then outlines challenges and future perspectives for the benefit of experienced researchers and practitioners in the field.

Judee Burgoon is Professor of Communication, Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona, where she is Director of Research for the Center for the Management of Information. She has authored or edited fourteen books and monographs and more than 300 published articles, chapters and reviews related to nonverbal and verbal communication, interpersonal deception, and computer-mediated communication. The recipient of the highest honors from the International Communication Association and National Communication Association, she has been named the most published woman in the field of communication in the twentieth century.

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann has pioneered research into virtual humans over the last thirty years. Recently, she revolutionized robotics with her social robot, Nadine, who shows emotions and memory processes. She has received more than thirty awards and, besides directing her research group MIRALab at the University of Geneva, is presently Visiting Professor and Director of the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Maja Pantic is Professor of Affective and Behavioral Computing and leader of the i·BUG group at Imperial College London, working on machine analysis of human non-verbal behavior and its applications to human-computer, human-robot and computer-mediated human-human interaction. She has published more than 250 technical papers in machine analysis of facial expressions, machine analysis of human body gestures, audiovisual analysis of emotions and social signals, and human-centered machine interfaces.

Alessandro Vinciarelli is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of the School of Computing Science and Associate Academic of the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow. He has published more than 100 scientific works, has been principal or co-principal investigator on fifteen national and international projects, including the European Network of Excellence on Social Signal Processing. Vinciarelli has organized more than twenty-five scientific events and has co-funded a webcasting company, Klewel.