Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast hope to complete the 10m
euro project for an emotion-sensitive computer within four years.

The aim is to enable computers to think and behave more like humans.

The European-wide project is being coordinated from the university's
School of Psychology and involves 160 researchers from 27 institutions.

The university's researchers developed the proposal and negotiated
the contract with the European Commission.

The academics said the work would build upon attempts to create
"multi-modal interfaces" which
allow machines to sense and respond to the moods of the user.

Programme coordinator Professor Roddy Cowie said while it sounded
like science fiction, computers which
responded to human emotion would emerge.

"At the moment, our use of computers is limited by the fact that
we need a keyboard and a screen to access them," he said.

"It would make an enormous difference if we could interact with
them by speaking normally - perhaps through a microphone and a transmitter
in a 'Star Trek' badge.

"But emotion is part of normal speech, and experience has shown
that most users are deeply uncomfortable with speech interfaces
that ignore it - too uncomfortable to use them very much.

"If we can make computers more intuitive
and expressive, and also less challenging to use, there is enormous
potential to let people make fuller use of information technology."

The emotion-sensitive computer would have its own
"personality" and establish a social relationship with the
user.

"It's a fair bet that in 30 years' time, emotion-sensitive
interfaces will be as much part of life as windows and mouse interfaces
are now," said Professor Cowie.

The project team believes such computers would play a major role in
teaching and learning.