Face Analysis Under Uncontrolled Conditions

5Facial Expression Modeling

Benjamin ALLAERT¹, Ioan Marius BILASCO² and Chaabane DJERABA²

¹IMT Nord Europe, Lille, France

²University of Lille, France

5.1. Introduction

The manifestation of our emotions passes through several components, notably (1) cognitive – the evaluation and processing of perceived information, (2) physiological – our emotions sometimes cause an increase in our heart rate, our respiratory rate, our perspiration, etc. and (3) expressive – external expression of the emotion, i.e. facial expressions, posture, gestures, tone of voice, etc. For example, where a neurologist will be attached to notions of somatic factors or brain activation, a sociologist will have a much more global vision and will determine values linked to the given social parameters to study, for example, a mass panic movement or anxiety in the face of a given situation. Nevertheless, the different conceptual approaches bring complementary points of view, which allow us to better target the difficulty of the problem.

Since it does not require intrusive sensors, facial expression analysis is attracting a lot of research attention. In addition to the challenges related to inter-individual differences such as gender and culture, there are other issues to consider when looking at facial expressions. Ekman and Rosenberg (1997) show that a facial expression is the result of an activation of the facial muscles, where the intensity of these changes is correlated with the intention of a person to ...