Emotions and Learning in a Developing Robot (original) (raw)
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In his famous thought experiments on synthetic vehicles, Valentino Braitenberg stipulated that simple stimulus-response reactions in an organism could evoke the appearance of complex behavior, which, to the unsuspecting human observer, may even appear to be driven by emotions such as fear, aggression and even love (Braitenberg 1984). In fact, humans appear to have a strong propensity to anthropomorphize, driven by our inherent desire for predictability that will quickly lead us to discern patterns, cause-and-effect relationships and yes, emotions, in animated entities, be they natural or artificial. But might there be reasons, that we should intentionally “implement” emotions into artificial entities, such as robots? How would we proceed in creating robot emotions? And what, if any, are the ethical implications of creating “emotional” robots? The following article aims to shed some light on these questions with a multi-disciplinary review of recent empirical investigations into the various facets of emotions in robot psychology.
The Role of Emotions in Sensori-Motor Learning
3rd International Symposia on Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, Genova (Italy), 1999
The aim of the present paper is to show that emotions, which play an important role in development and learning both in humans and animals, could be embedded in an artificial system. Besides, we emphasize the importance of emotions during learning and development as endogenous teaching devices.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2004
Some robots have been given emotional expressions in an attempt to improve human-computer interaction. In this article we analyze what it would mean for a robot to have emotion, distinguishing emotional expression for communication from emotion as a mechanism for the organization of behavior. Research on the neurobiology of emotion yields a deepening understanding of interacting brain structures and neural mechanisms rooted in neuromodulation that underlie emotions in humans and other animals. However, the chemical basis of animal function differs greatly from the mechanics and computations of current machines. We therefore abstract from biology a functional characterization of emotion that does not depend on physical substrate or evolutionary history, and is broad enough to encompass the possible emotions of robots.
1987
Emotions involve complex processes produced by interactions between motives, beliefs, percepts, etc. E.g. real or imagined fulfilment or violation of a motive, or triggering of a 'motivegenerator ', can disturb processes produced by other motives. Tounderstand emotions, therefore, we need to understand motives and the types of processes they can produce. This leads to a study of the global architecture of a mind. Some constraints on the evolution of minds are disussed. Types of motives and the processes they generate are sketched.
2010
Can the sciences of the artificial positively contribute to the scientific exploration of life and cognition? Can they actually improve the scientific knowledge of natural living and cognitive processes, from biological metabolism to reproduction, from conceptual mapping of the environment to logic reasoning, language, or even emotional expression? To these kinds of questions our article aims to answer in the affirmative. Its main object is the scientific emergent methodology often called the "synthetic approach", which promotes the programmatic production of embodied and situated models of living and cognitive systems in order to explore aspects of life and cognition not accessible in natural systems and scenarios. The first part of this article presents and discusses the synthetic approach, and proposes an epistemological framework which promises to warrant genuine transmission of knowledge from the sciences of the artificial to the sciences of the natural. The second part of this article looks at the research applying the synthetic approach to the psychological study of emotional development. It shows how robotics, through the synthetic methodology, can develop a particular perspective on emotions, coherent with current psychological theories of emotional development and fitting well with the recent "cognitive extension" approach proposed by cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN HUMAN COGNITION AND ROBOTICS
2012
Emotions have puzzled and fascinated thinkers throughout history, from Plato and Aristotle to modern cognitive psychologists. Until relatively recently, the widely accepted view on emotions has been that they are only an interference on the neutral behaviour of a person. However, there has been a rapid increase in the study of the effects of emotion on cognition, popularizing the view that an adequate theory of cognition that ignores emotion is likely to prove inadequate (Eysenck, Keane, 2009).
Robot uses emotions to detect and learn the unknown
Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, 2013
Humans can perceive and learn new information from novel, previously unknown to them kinds of experiences, which can be very challenging for an artificial system. Here, a cognitive architecture is presented that uses its emotional intelligence to learn new concepts from previously unknown kinds of experiences. The underlying principle is that emotional appraisals of experience expressed internally as several MoNADs help the architecture to detect conceptual novelty and facilitate the generation and learning of new concepts. With the goal of measuring effects of emotional cognition on learning, the architecture was implemented in a robot and studied in a number of paradigms involving variable color settings. The key findings are the following. Initially, the dynamic state of the model neural network does not converge to some attractor when it receives an unknown kind of input. On the other hand, it quickly converges to an attractor in response to a familiar input. With time, the system develops the ability to learn previously unknown categories and concepts as new MoNAD. It is proposed that the model simulates a subliminal response of a human brain to an unknown situation. The findings have broad implications for future emotional artificial intelligence.
Grounding emotions in robots – An introduction to the special issue
Adaptive Behavior, 2016
Robots inhabiting human environments need to act in relation to their own experience and embodiment as well as to social and emotional aspects. Robots that learn, act upon and incorporate their own experience and perception of others’ emotions into their responses make not only more productive artificial agents but also agents with whom humans can appropriately interact. This special issue seeks to address the significance of grounding of emotions in robots in relation to aspects of physical and homeostatic interaction in the world at an individual and social level. Specific questions concern: How can emotion and social interaction be grounded in the behavioral activity of the robotic system? Is a robot able to have intrinsic emotions? How can emotions, grounded in the embodiment of the robot, facilitate individually and socially adaptive behavior to the robot? This opening chapter provides an introduction to the articles that comprise this special issue and briefly discusses their ...
Can the sciences of the artificial positively contribute to the scientific exploration of life and cognition? Can they actually improve the scientific knowledge of natural living and cognitive processes, from biological metabolism to reproduction, from conceptual mapping of the environment to logic reasoning, language, or even emotional expression? To these kinds of questions our article aims to answer in the affirmative. Its main object is the scientific emergent methodology often called the "synthetic approach", which promotes the programmatic production of embodied and situated models of living and cognitive systems in order to explore aspects of life and cognition not accessible in natural systems and scenarios. The first part of this article presents and discusses the synthetic approach, and proposes an epistemological framework which promises to warrant genuine transmission of knowledge from the sciences of the artificial to the sciences of the natural. The second part of this article looks at the research applying the synthetic approach to the psychological study of emotional development. It shows how robotics, through the synthetic methodology, can develop a particular perspective on emotions, coherent with current psychological theories of emotional development and fitting well with the recent "cognitive extension" approach proposed by cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
On the Possibility of Robots Having Emotions
I argue against the commonly held intuition that robots and virtual agents will never have emotions by contending robots can have emotions in a sense that is functionally similar to humans, even if the robots' emotions are not exactly equivalent to those of humans. To establish a foundation for assessing the robots' emotional capacities, I first define what emotions are by characterizing the components of emotion consistent across emotion theories. Second, I dissect the affective-cognitive architecture of MIT's Kismet and Leonardo, two robots explicitly designed to express emotions and to interact with humans, in order to explore whether they have emotions. I argue that, although Kismet and Leonardo lack the subjective feelings component of emotion, they are capable of having emotions.