Towards enhancing emotional responses to media using auto-calibrating electric muscle stimulation (EMS)

We evaluate the use of Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) as a method of amplifying emotional responses to multimedia content. .is paper presents an auto-calibration method to stimulate two facial expressions using EMS. We focus on two expressions: frown and smile. We a.empted control of facial muscles with facial feedback for automatically calibrating these facial expressions: our computer vision system detects the facial expression and autocalibrates the EMS parameters (intensity and duration) based on the user's current facial expression. We present results from a pilot study with four participants evaluating the auto-calibration system and collecting initial feedback on the use of EMS to augment, for example, media experiences: while watching movies we can enhance the emotional response of the users during happy and sad scenes by stimulating corresponding face muscles.