Towards Somaesthetic Smarthome Designs

Abstract

Have you ever experienced a mirror that not only "sees" how you see yourself, but tells you how others perceive you? May such a smartmirror help not only adapt/improve oneself externally (look) but also internally (mood, emotions)? What are the expectations, fears (privacy)? The acceptance of such a smart thing requires approaches that go beyond technology-driven designs. In this paper, we report on the construction of an affective emotion-sensitive smartmirror as a smart piece of furniture for smarthomes and explorative studies with that system which address somaesthetics and aims to help inhabitants in self-reflection. The paper presents and discusses the prototype implementation and the results of a study in which the ideas, concerns, and experiences for/with the self-reflection capabilities of the affective smartmirror were explored by participants using the prototype as a technology probe.

Synthesising Expressive Speech – Which Synthesiser for VOCAs?

“…People especially those with CCN (Complex Communication Needs) have a great need for speech synthesisers that are able to convey a variety of expressive styles in a natural manner. This aspect is also important in light of the rapidly increasing speech interaction and its acceptance in smarthomes [6], to respond appropriately to the emotions of residents [7].…”

“…To evaluate the quality of the produced speech, a variety of perceptual quality dimensions of synthetic speech, such as intelligibility and naturalness, have been defined (see [10] for an overview) that are also employed in the annual 'Blizzard' challenge 7 on advancing speech synthesis. Also, the emotional atmosphere of a scene and the moods of the characters have been included as a quality dimension in audiobook synthesis tasks.…”