Peter W. McOwan

About

Peter W. McOwan is a pioneering researcher in affective computing and human-robot interaction (HRI), whose work has fundamentally advanced how robots perceive and respond to human emotions. His research centers on developing affect recognition systems that enable robot companions to detect and interpret nuanced emotional states in naturalistic, real-world settings — a significant departure from earlier laboratory-based, posed expression datasets. McOwan's most influential contribution, "Automatic Analysis of Affective Postures and Body Motion to Detect Engagement with a Game Companion" (2011, 245 citations), demonstrated how body language and motion analysis could be harnessed to gauge user engagement during human-robot gameplay. His closely related work on the iCat robot chess companion (2009, 159 citations) pioneered multimodal, context-sensitive approaches to affect detection that blended social and task-based cues. The Inter-ACT corpus he developed became a valuable resource for the broader research community, providing rich, contextualised affective data from children interacting with robots. Collectively accumulating over 700 citations, McOwan's contributions have shaped the design principles of empathic, socially intelligent robot companions. His research bridges computer vision, affective computing, and robotics, offering essential insights for anyone designing systems where machines must genuinely understand and respond to human emotional experience.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Automatic analysis of affective postures and body motion to detect engagement with a game companion

   245 citations · 2011
2. 2
   Detecting user engagement with a robot companion using task and social interaction-based features

   159 citations · 2009
3. 3
   Affect recognition for interactive companions: challenges and design in real world scenarios

   86 citations · 2009
4. 4
   Detecting Engagement in HRI: An Exploration of Social and Task-Based Context

   55 citations · 2012
5. 5
   MULTIMODAL AFFECT MODELING AND RECOGNITION FOR EMPATHIC ROBOT COMPANIONS

   50 citations · 2013
6. 6
   It's all in the game: Towards an affect sensitive and context aware game companion

   41 citations · 2009
7. 7
   Context-Sensitive Affect Recognition for a Robotic Game Companion

   32 citations · 2014
8. 8
   Inter-ACT

   13 citations · 2010
9. 9
   Towards an affect sensitive interactive companion

   10 citations · 2013
10. 10
    Face the Music and Glance

    10 citations · 2015

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links