# ABAW: Learning from Synthetic Data & Multi-Task Learning Challenges

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.01138 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01138/

## Key facts

- Cited by 110 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 59 of its 94 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 59)

- [Expression, Affect, Action Unit Recognition: Aff-Wild2, Multi-Task Learning and ArcFace](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04855/) (2019)
- [Deep Affect Prediction in-the-wild: Aff-Wild Database and Challenge, Deep Architectures, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.10938/) (2018)
- [Analysing Affective Behavior in the First ABAW 2020 Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.11409/) (2020)
- [Affect Analysis in-the-wild: Valence-Arousal, Expressions, Action Units and a Unified Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15792/) (2021)
- [Distribution Matching for Heterogeneous Multi-Task Learning: a Large-scale Face Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03790/) (2021)
- [Analysing Affective Behavior in the second ABAW2 Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15318/) (2021)
- [ABAW: Valence-Arousal Estimation, Expression Recognition, Action Unit Detection & Multi-Task Learning Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10659/) (2022)
- [Face Behavior a la carte: Expressions, Affect and Action Units in a Single Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11111/) (2019)
- [Aff-Wild2: Extending the Aff-Wild Database for Affect Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07770/) (2018)
- [Deep Transparent Prediction through Latent Representation Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07044/) (2020)
- [MIA-COV19D: COVID-19 Detection through 3-D Chest CT Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07524/) (2021)
- [Two-Stream Aural-Visual Affect Analysis in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03399/) (2020)
- [Transformer-based Multimodal Information Fusion for Facial Expression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12367/) (2022)
- [Exploiting multi-CNN features in CNN-RNN based Dimensional Emotion Recognition on the OMG in-the-wild Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01417/) (2019)
- [Multitask Emotion Recognition with Incomplete Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03557/) (2020)
- [A Joint Cross-Attention Model for Audio-Visual Fusion in Dimensional Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14779/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Facial Synthesis in the Dimensional Affect Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08004/) (2018)
- [MixAugment & Mixup: Augmentation Methods for Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04442/) (2022)
- [A Multi-Task Learning & Generation Framework: Valence-Arousal, Action Units & Primary Expressions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07771/) (2018)
- [A Multi-modal and Multi-task Learning Method for Action Unit and Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04187/) (2021)
- [Training Deep Neural Networks with Different Datasets In-the-wild: The Emotion Recognition Paradigm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04359/) (2018)
- [Continuous Emotion Recognition using Visual-audio-linguistic information: A Technical Report for ABAW3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13031/) (2022)
- [AI-MIA: COVID-19 Detection & Severity Analysis through Medical Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04732/) (2022)
- [A Multi-task Mean Teacher for Semi-supervised Facial Affective Behavior Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04225/) (2021)
- [Prior Aided Streaming Network for Multi-task Affective Recognitionat the 2nd ABAW2 Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03708/) (2021)
- [Coarse-to-Fine Cascaded Networks with Smooth Predicting for Video Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13052/) (2022)
- [Incremental Boosting Convolutional Neural Network for Facial Action Unit Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05395/) (2017)
- [Frame-level Prediction of Facial Expressions, Valence, Arousal and Action Units for Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13436/) (2022)
- [A Multi-component CNN-RNN Approach for Dimensional Emotion Recognition in-the-wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01452/) (2018)
- [Multi-modal Emotion Estimation for in-the-wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13032/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 110)

- [ABAW: Valence-Arousal Estimation, Expression Recognition, Action Unit Detection & Emotional Reaction Intensity Estimation Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01498/) (2023)
- [The 6th Affective Behavior Analysis in-the-wild (ABAW) Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19344/) (2024)
- [Distribution Matching for Multi-Task Learning of Classification Tasks: a Large-Scale Study on Faces & Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01219/) (2024)
- [A Deep Neural Architecture for Harmonizing 3-D Input Data Analysis and Decision Making in Medical Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00175/) (2023)
- [COVID-19 Computer-aided Diagnosis through AI-assisted CT Imaging Analysis: Deploying a Medical AI System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06242/) (2024)
- [Leveraging TCN and Transformer for effective visual-audio fusion in continuous emotion recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08356/) (2023)
- [BTDNet: a Multi-Modal Approach for Brain Tumor Radiogenomic Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03485/) (2023)
- [MMA-MRNNet: Harnessing Multiple Models of Affect and Dynamic Masked RNN for Precise Facial Expression Intensity Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00180/) (2023)
- [Robust Light-Weight Facial Affective Behavior Recognition with CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09915/) (2024)
- [Recursive Joint Cross-Modal Attention for Multimodal Fusion in Dimensional Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13659/) (2024)
- [HSEmotion Team at ABAW-8 Competition: Audiovisual Ambivalence/Hesitancy, Emotional Mimicry Intensity and Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10399/) (2025)
- [Joint Multimodal Transformer for Emotion Recognition in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10488/) (2024)
- [SAM2CLIP2SAM: Vision Language Model for Segmentation of 3D CT Scans for Covid-19 Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15728/) (2024)
- [Ensuring UAV Safety: A Vision-only and Real-time Framework for Collision Avoidance Through Object Detection, Tracking, and Distance Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06749/) (2024)
- [Multi-Task Learning Framework for Emotion Recognition in-the-wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09373/) (2022)
- [Mitigating Negative Transfer in Multi-Task Learning with Exponential Moving Average Loss Weighting Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12999/) (2022)
- [Textualized and Feature-based Models for Compound Multimodal Emotion Recognition in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12927/) (2024)
- [Affective Behavior Analysis using Action Unit Relation Graph and Multi-task Cross Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10293/) (2022)
- [A transformer-based approach to video frame-level prediction in Affective Behaviour Analysis In-the-wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09293/) (2023)
- [Multi-modal Facial Action Unit Detection with Large Pre-trained Models for the 5th Competition on Affective Behavior Analysis in-the-wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10590/) (2023)
- [HSEmotion Team at the 6th ABAW Competition: Facial Expressions, Valence-Arousal and Emotion Intensity Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11590/) (2024)
- [Exploring Facial Expression Recognition through Semi-Supervised Pretraining and Temporal Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11942/) (2024)
- [Can Machine Learning Assist in Diagnosis of Primary Immune Thrombocytopenia? A feasibility study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20562/) (2024)
- [Affective Behavior Analysis using Task-adaptive and AU-assisted Graph Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11663/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Facial Expression Recognition through Dual-Direction Attention Mixed Feature Networks: Application to 7th ABAW Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12390/) (2024)
- [EmotiEffNet Facial Features in Uni-task Emotion Recognition in Video at ABAW-5 competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09162/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Affect Analysis: A Protocol for Ensuring Fairness and Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02164/) (2024)
- [HSE-NN Team at the 4th ABAW Competition: Multi-task Emotion Recognition and Learning from Synthetic Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09508/) (2022)
- [Mid-level Representation Enhancement and Graph Embedded Uncertainty Suppressing for Facial Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13235/) (2022)
- [Facial Affective Behavior Analysis Method for 5th ABAW Competition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09145/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper describes the fourth Affective Behavior Analysis in-the-wild (ABAW) Competition, held in conjunction with European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2022. The 4th ABAW Competition is a continuation of the Competitions held at IEEE CVPR 2022, ICCV 2021, IEEE FG 2020 and IEEE CVPR 2017 Conferences, and aims at automatically analyzing affect. In the previous runs of this Competition, the Challenges targeted Valence-Arousal Estimation, Expression Classification and Action Unit Detection. This year the Competition encompasses two different Challenges: i) a Multi-Task-Learning one in which the goal is to learn at the same time (i.e., in a multi-task learning setting) all the three above mentioned tasks; and ii) a Learning from Synthetic Data one in which the goal is to learn to recognise the basic expressions from artificially generated data and generalise to real data. The Aff-Wild2 database is a large scale in-the-wild database and the first one that contains annotations for valence and arousal, expressions and action units. This database is the basis for the above Challenges. In more detail: i) s-Aff-Wild2 -- a static version of Aff-Wild2 database -- has been constructed and utilized for the purposes of the Multi-Task-Learning Challenge; and ii) some specific frames-images from the Aff-Wild2 database have been used in an expression manipulation manner for creating the synthetic dataset, which is the basis for the Learning from Synthetic Data Challenge. In this paper, at first we present the two Challenges, along with the utilized corpora, then we outline the evaluation metrics and finally present the baseline systems per Challenge, as well as their derived results. More information regarding the Competition can be found in the competition's website: https://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/resources/eccv-2023-4th-abaw/.