Multimodal Emotion Recognition using Audio-Video Transformer Fusion with Cross Attention

Abstract: Understanding emotions is a fundamental aspect of human communication. Integrating audio and video signals offers a more comprehensive understanding of emotional states compared to traditional methods that rely on a single data source, such as speech or facial expressions. Despite its potential, multimodal emotion recognition faces significant challenges, particularly in synchronization, feature extraction, and fusion of diverse data sources. To address these issues, this paper introduces a novel transformer-based model named Audio-Video Transformer Fusion with Cross Attention (AVT-CA). The AVT-CA model employs a transformer fusion approach to effectively capture and synchronize interlinked features from both audio and video inputs, thereby resolving synchronization problems. Additionally, the Cross Attention mechanism within AVT-CA selectively extracts and emphasizes critical features while discarding irrelevant ones from both modalities, addressing feature extraction and fusion challenges. Extensive experimental analysis conducted on the CMU-MOSEI, RAVDESS and CREMA-D datasets demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed model. The results underscore the importance of AVT-CA in developing precise and reliable multimodal emotion recognition systems for practical applications.