Best Paper Award in Responsible Affective Computing

The paper “It’s not Fair” – Fairness for a Small Dataset of Multi-Modal Dyadic Mental Well-being Coaching by Jiaee Cheong*, Micol Spitale*, and Hatice Gunes (*both authors have equally contributed to the paper) has been awarded the Best Paper Award in Responsible Affective Computing category at the IEEE Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction 2023 (ACII2023).

ACII 2023 was held in person at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the birthplace of affective computing. The conference was hosted by the MIT Media Lab and supported by the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC). ACII is the premier international forum for research on affective and multimodal human-machine interaction and systems.

AFAR Ranked as 2nd Best Exhibitor at the Physics at Work Exhibition 2023

At the Physics at Work Exhibition this year, the Affective Intelligence and Robotics (AFAR) Lab was selected as second best exhibitor from approximately 25 exhibitors in both categories students favourite and teachers’ favourite. The Physics at Work Exhibition ran over three days, with two sessions on each day. Every year, this event is held at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and aims to show 14-16yr olds the variety of careers to which study in Physics can lead and the range of practical problems that physics can be used to solve. One of the exhibitions from the AFAR Lab was a one-to-one taster session with the Pepper Robot. Students from 12 different schools across the UK had a chance to experience interacting with a social robot. Students played a short game with Pepper while it learned and adapted to their facial expressions. The game was explained to them by Pepper, who did several interactions, and learned to respond to students, using its speech and body gestures, based on their expressive behaviour.

AFAR's entry Robotics in the Time of Corona received First Prize at the Capturing Computer Science Annual Photo Competition 2023

Capturing Computer Science Annual Photo Competition shows the world of computer science research at the Department of Computer Science and Technology of the University of Cambridge. AFAR Lab's PhD student Nida Abbasi took this photo of her colleague Micol elbow-bumping Nao, one of the two wellbeing robotic coaches that are being developed here. Both the researcher and the robot are wearing masks because "I believe images like this can teach people - especially vulnerable groups like children and the elderly - the importance of wearing masks and reducing physical contact in these strange times," Nida says. "If a robot can wear a mask and follow social distancing, I can too."