Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

9
Moving Up the Food Chain
Motivation and Emotion
in Behavior-Based Robots
ronald c. arkin
This article investigates the relationship between motivations and emotions
as evidenced by a broad range of animal models, including humans.
Emotions constitute a subset of motivations that provide support for an
agent’s survival in a complex world. Both motivations and emotions
affect behavioral performance, but motivation can additionally lead to
the formulation of concrete goal-achieving behavior, whereas emotions
are concerned with modulating existing behaviors in support of current
activity. My focus is placed on how these models can have utility within
the context of working robotic systems. Behavior-based control serves
as the primary vehicle through which emotions and motivations are
integrated into robots ranging from hexapods to wheeled robots to humanoids.
In this framework, motivations and emotions dynamically
affect the underlying control of a cybernetic system by altering its underlying
behavioral parameters.
I review actual robotic examples that have, each in their own way,
provided useful environments where questions about emotions and motivations
can be addressed. I start with a description of models of the sowbug
that provided the first testbed for asking questions about the use of parallel
streams of sensory information, goal-oriented behaviors, motivation
and emotions, and developmental growth. I then move on in some
detail to a model of the praying mantis, in which explicit motivational