Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Social Signal Processing

From Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Tuss we know the importance of punctuation and that occasionally it can be a matter of life and death. However, in some cases punctuation cannot come to our rescue.

Such is the case for social signal processing or SSP. We all know what signal processing is, namely the analysis, interpretation, and manipulation of signals. (Incidentally, in our case the signals of interest are color images.) So is social signal processing a European form of socialized processing of images, like social medicine?

In social signal processing the adjective is not social but social signal — it is about the processing of social signals. What makes this confusing is that many of the researchers in this area are signal processing experts. In view of this, the alternate name of social signals understanding is maybe more appropriate.

SSP is concerned with the machine analysis of social behavior. It is a branch of interactive multimodal information management and studies non-verbal behavioral cues and social behavior. Recently SSPNET, a new Network of Excellence funded under work programme topic ICT-2007.2.2 of the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, has been funded.

Just imagine yourself one day sitting in front of a financial advisor to talk about your retirement savings and consulting an application on your smart-phone that can assess if you are talking to a snake in a suit

No comments:

Post a Comment