Emotions in robot design

Abstract

Investigates the role emotions might play in robot design. It is argued that if one wants to deal with this problem one first has to develop a profound understanding of the mechanisms underlying behaviors which are called emotional. To investigate the relation between behavior and mechanism the "New Fungus Eater" approach is proposed, which is a minimalist bottom-up approach. It is shown that often one can achieve certain desired behaviors with surprisingly cheap designs if the dynamics of the system-environment interaction is appropriately taken into account. The authors conclude by pointing out major differences between traditional and robot programming.<>