Evaluating the Feasibility of Standard Facial Expression Recognition in Individuals with Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disabilities

Recent research has underscored the increasing preference of users for human-like interactions with machines. Consequently, facial expression recognition has gained significance as a means of imparting social robots with the capacity to discern the emotional states of users. In this investigation, we assess the suitability of deep learning approaches, known for their remarkable performance in this domain, for recognizing facial expressions in individuals with intellectual disabilities, which has not been yet studied in the literature, to the best of our knowledge. To address this objective, we train a set of twelve distinct convolutional neural networks in different approaches, including an ensemble of datasets without individuals with intellectual disabilities and a dataset featuring such individuals. Our examination of the outcomes achieved by the various models under distinct training conditions, coupled with a comprehensive analysis of critical facial regions during expression recognition facilitated by explainable artificial intelligence techniques, revealed significant distinctions in facial expressions between individuals with and without intellectual disabilities, as well as among individuals with intellectual disabilities. Remarkably, our findings demonstrate the feasibility of facial expression recognition within this population through tailored user-specific training methodologies, which enable the models to effectively address the unique expressions of each user.

Unveiling the Human-like Similarities of Automatic Facial Expression Recognition: An Empirical Exploration through Explainable AI

Facial expression recognition is vital for human behavior analysis, and deep learning has enabled models that can outperform humans. However, it is unclear how closely they mimic human processing. This study aims to explore the similarity between deep neural networks and human perception by comparing twelve different networks, including both general object classifiers and FER-specific models. We employ an innovative global explainable AI method to generate heatmaps, revealing crucial facial regions for the twelve networks trained on six facial expressions. We assess these results both quantitatively and qualitatively, comparing them to ground truth masks based on Friesen and Ekman's description and among them. We use Intersection over Union (IoU) and normalized correlation coefficients for comparisons. We generate 72 heatmaps to highlight critical regions for each expression and architecture. Qualitatively, models with pre-trained weights show more similarity in heatmaps compared to those without pre-training. Specifically, eye and nose areas influence certain facial expressions, while the mouth is consistently important across all models and expressions. Quantitatively, we find low average IoU values (avg. 0.2702) across all expressions and architectures. The best-performing architecture averages 0.3269, while the worst-performing one averages 0.2066. Dendrograms, built with the normalized correlation coefficient, reveal two main clusters for most expressions: models with pre-training and models without pre-training. Findings suggest limited alignment between human and AI facial expression recognition, with network architectures influencing the similarity, as similar architectures prioritize similar facial regions.

Local Agnostic Video Explanations: a Study on the Applicability of Removal-Based Explanations to Video

Explainable artificial intelligence techniques are becoming increasingly important with the rise of deep learning applications in various domains. These techniques aim to provide a better understanding of complex "black box" models and enhance user trust while maintaining high learning performance. While many studies have focused on explaining deep learning models in computer vision for image input, video explanations remain relatively unexplored due to the temporal dimension's complexity. In this paper, we present a unified framework for local agnostic explanations in the video domain. Our contributions include: (1) Extending a fine-grained explanation framework tailored for computer vision data, (2) Adapting six existing explanation techniques to work on video data by incorporating temporal information and enabling local explanations, and (3) Conducting an evaluation and comparison of the adapted explanation methods using different models and datasets. We discuss the possibilities and choices involved in the removal-based explanation process for visual data. The adaptation of six explanation methods for video is explained, with comparisons to existing approaches. We evaluate the performance of the methods using automated metrics and user-based evaluation, showing that 3D RISE, 3D LIME, and 3D Kernel SHAP outperform other methods. By decomposing the explanation process into manageable steps, we facilitate the study of each choice's impact and allow for further refinement of explanation methods to suit specific datasets and models.

Deep Learning for Computer Vision based Activity Recognition and Fall Detection of the Elderly: a Systematic Review

As the percentage of elderly people in developed countries increases worldwide, the healthcare of this collective is a worrying matter, especially if it includes the preservation of their autonomy. In this direction, many studies are being published on Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems, which help to reduce the preoccupations raised by the independent living of the elderly. In this study, a systematic review of the literature is presented on fall detection and Human Activity Recognition (HAR) for the elderly, as the two main tasks to solve to guarantee the safety of elderly people living alone. To address the current tendency to perform these two tasks, the review focuses on the use of Deep Learning (DL) based approaches on computer vision data. In addition, different collections of data like DL models, datasets or hardware (e.g. depth or thermal cameras) are gathered from the reviewed studies and provided for reference in future studies. Strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches are also discussed and, based on them, our recommendations for future works are provided.