Preliminary test of affective virtual reality scenes with head mount display for emotion elicitation experiment

Emotion elicitation experiments are conducted to collect biological signals from a subject who is in a state of emotion. The recorded signals are used as training/test dataset for constructing an emotion recognition system by means of machine learning. In conventional emotion elicitation experiments, affective images or videos were provided for a subject to draw out an emotion from them. However, the authors have concerns about the effectiveness. To surely evoke a specific emotion from subjects, we have produced several Virtual Reality (VR) scenes and provided the subjects with the scenes through a Head Mount Display (HMD) in emotion elicitation experiments. Usability and effectiveness of the VR scenes with the HMD for emotion elicitation were experimentally verified. It was confirmed that experience of the VR scenes with the HMD was effective in evoking emotions, but we have to improve how subjects learn a way of playing VR scenes and provide measures against VR sickness at any cost. Moreover, Support Vector Machine classifiers as an emotion recognition system were constructed using the biological signals measured from the subjects in the emotion elicitation experiments.