Social, Cognitive and Affective AI (SCAAI)

An interdisciplinary research group of the Cognitive Assistants (COS) department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)

We believe that satisfying social interaction with technical devices should follow the principles of Human-Human interaction. Within that context, we focus on modeling human emotions, communication of emotions, behavioral patterns, as well as social norms and values.

Research Topics

Affective Computing; (Mental) Healthcare; (Home) Care Robotics; eHealth; Virtual Reality; Sign Language Translation.

News

• MARSS project started
  The MARSS project started. The MARSS research project (Multimodal System for Combating Disinformation through the Reflection of Socio-Emotional Processes for Students) started on 1 April 2026 and investigates how AI-based technologies can help students identify, critically reflect on, and combat disinformation and emotional manipulation in digital media. The project is coordinated by the German Research… Read more: MARSS project started
• DGS-Fabeln-1-SE online
  The proceedings of the last LREC2026 conference are online. You can find there information about our latest dataset for emotion analysis of sign language. DGS-Fabeln-1-SE if an extension of DGS-Fabeln-1 with Sentiment Estimation. We used fours LLMs plus a majority voting filter to associate a sentiment label (negative, neutral, positive) to each segment of the… Read more: DGS-Fabeln-1-SE online
• Project CLIKK started
  Project CLIKK (Learning Chinese with artificial intelligence) is ongoing. The CLIKK research project (Chinese language teaching with large language models and a focus on intercultural communication skills) started place in October 2025. It investigates how AI-based virtual agents can support the acquisition of intercultural skills in Chinese language teaching. The project is being carried out… Read more: Project CLIKK started
• Health literacy – AI as a game changer?!
  Our research fellow Jan Alexandersson participated at the Federal Institute for Public Health and the Federal Ministry of Health on November 19, 2025, in Berlin. An interview extract here: https://www.bioeg-fachtag.de/gesundheitskompetenz/ Take over. “The findings from the current Bitkom study and the conference organized by the Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG) and the Federal Ministry… Read more: Health literacy – AI as a game changer?!
• SLTAT 2025 publications
  On last September 16th, 2025, the SCAAI group organized the 9th international workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technologies (SLTAT2025) and contributed with 6 publications! The SLTAT presentation itself:Nunnari, F. et al. (2025) “9th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology (SLTAT 2025),” in Adjunct Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual… Read more: SLTAT 2025 publications