Growing emotions

Using affect to help children understand a plant's needs

Conference paper (2015)

Authors

Jules W. Verdijk Universiteit Leiden
Daan Oldenhof Universiteit Leiden
Daan Krijnen Universiteit Leiden
D.J. Broekens Interactive Intelligence - EEMCS
Research Group
Interactive Intelligence (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Education Environment Plant Interactive system Machine affect expression
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2015

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Intelligent Systems

Research Group

Interactive Intelligence

Abstract

This study proposes a homeostasis-based affective system with emotion and mood as a way to communicate a plant's health state and environmental needs to preschool and primary school children. A system is proposed that expresses mood and emotion to express the plant's health state and its affective reaction to user-induced environmental changes respectively. A long-term goal is to enhance empathic reasoning in children and respect for plants and life in general, using affect as a communicative interface (even though the underlying system is not emotive per se). A fundamental issue addressed in this work is to what extend it is useful to add affective communication to a system that is otherwise non-affective (plants in our case) in order to better understand that system's state. A computer simulation of the affective plant was tested (n=7). Our results suggest that children can identify the simulated plant's needs and state based on graphically expressed affect, and can act to enhance the homeostasis of the plant.