Emotions and Learning in a Developing Robot (original) (raw)

The role of emotion has been underestimated in the field of robotics. We claim that emotions have a twofold aspect relevant to the building of a purposeful active robot: a cognitive aspect and a phenomenological one. We need to understand both these aspects. With regard with the first of them, it is possible to split it by at least two other relevant points. First, emotions could be the basis for binding between internal values and different external situations following the somatic marker theory. Second, emotions could play a crucial role, during development, both for taking difficult decisions whose effects are not immediately verifiable both for the creation of more complex behavioral functions. Thus emotions can be seen, from a cognitive point of view, as a reinforcement stimulus and in this respect, they can be modeled in an artificial being. Inasmuch, emotions can be seen as a medium for linking rewards and values to external situations. Besides, we would like to accept the division between feelings and emotions. Emotions are, in James' words, the body theatre in which several emotions are represented and feelings are the mental perception of them. We could say that feelings are the qualia of the external (even if bodily) events we could call emotions. We are using this model of emotions in the development of our project: Babibot. We stress the importance of emotions during development as endogenous teaching devices.