The AffectToolbox: Affect Analysis for Everyone
Silvan Mertes Dominik Schiller Michael Dietz Elisabeth André Florian Lingenfelser
In the field of affective computing, where research continually advances at a
rapid pace, the demand for user-friendly tools has become increasingly
apparent. In this paper, we present the AffectToolbox, a novel software system
that aims to support researchers in developing affect-sensitive studies and
prototypes. The proposed system addresses the challenges posed by existing
frameworks, which often require profound programming knowledge and cater
primarily to power-users or skilled developers. Aiming to facilitate ease of
use, the AffectToolbox requires no programming knowledge and offers its
functionality to reliably analyze the affective state of users through an
accessible graphical user interface. The architecture encompasses a variety of
models for emotion recognition on multiple affective channels and modalities,
as well as an elaborate fusion system to merge multi-modal assessments into a
unified result. The entire system is open-sourced and will be publicly
available to ensure easy integration into more complex applications through a
well-structured, Python-based code base - therefore marking a substantial
contribution toward advancing affective computing research and fostering a more
collaborative and inclusive environment within this interdisciplinary field.