The following issues have been identified:

• Some relevant databases already exist, but they have significant limitations. Hence developing suitable collections of emotional material is a priority.
• Material should be audio-visual, and natural rather than acted.
• It should represent a wide range of emotional behaviour, not simply 'primary' emotions.
• It should cover a wide range of speakers, and preferably cultures.
• Recordings should be accompanied by reference assessments of their emotional content. Traditional linguistic labelling is less critical.
• The goal is to obtain 'live' material by developing scenarios which tend to elicit emotional behaviour, and which allow assessments of speaker emotions to govern actions. The techniques presented constitute tools that can be used and further developed in this framework.

Although a certain amount of material is available, and can be used in early developments of the PHYSTA system, it has become clear that the project needs to assemble its own database. Progress has been made at several levels.

1. Concepts and principles relevant to the construction of an audiovisual emotion database have been set out. Perhaps surprisingly, this appears to be the first systematic attempt to set out such a framework.

2. Work has begun on two approaches to obtaining suitable stimuli. The BBC has been approached for permission to use appropriate kinds of broadcast material, and studio recordings have been made of arguments in which friends discuss emotive topics.

3. Work on the production of processed signals is described in another report.

4. Two approaches to constructing the interpretation stream have been piloted. A format has been developed in which participants in the studio recordings review the recordings and assess the genuineness of their own emotional involvement. A system ('Feeltrace') has also been developed which allows third parties to report continuously on the emotional character of stimulus events, and it has been piloted using the studio recordings.