AffectiveNemo: Promoting owner-fish interaction by displaying observed fish emotion with speech bubble

Aquarium fish is one of the most common household companion animals for humans. Keeping and appreciating aquarium fish enriches us and provides comfort to our lives. However, difficulty in communicating and understanding their fish may negatively impact the person's motivation to continuously take care of their fish. In order to enhance human-fish interaction, we propose “AffectiveNemo”, an ACI system for aquarium fish, that estimates and displays “observed emotion” (defined as fish's emotional states that the system estimates based on observations by humans), via speech bubbles shown on an LCD display placed behind the aquarium. The system estimates the observed emotion by analyzing the movement of the fish in the aquarium, and combining this data along with the emotions that the humans perceive the fish to have. We evaluated the accuracy of each module as a preliminary experiment, conducted a user study on the influence of displaying observed emotion, and evaluated the utility of the system. Our findings concluded that the system can correctly detect the observed emotion, further enhance viewer sensitivity by displaying the observed emotion of aquarium fish that humans are perceptive, and promote the interest in aquarium fish.