Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

258 robots
Object of Attachment
Safe Zone
Comfort
Zone
ROBOTIC EXPERIMENTS
Figure 9.5 depicts the effects of various settings of comfort levels on a simulated
robot’s performance during an exploration task in the presence of an
attachment object. As the robot becomes less comfortable, it remains closer
to its object of attachment. A complete statistical analysis of these and other
results is presented in Likhachev and Arkin (2000). Similar results were
obtained during actual robotic experiments (Fig. 9.6).
The notion of emotional comfort as a basis for modulating behavior can
have significant impact in controlling a robot’s performance as it moves
through the world. This is not only of value in ensuring that the robot does
not stray from a given task or area with which it is familiar but can also provide
a basis for establishing interspecies bonding in entertainment robotics,
where creating a pet robot that can effectively relate to a human is of great
importance. The next section focuses on various aspects of human–robot
interaction in this new application domain for robots.
CANINE ETHOLOGY IN SUPPORT
OF HUMAN–ROBOT BONDING
Figure 9.4. The safe and comfort zones of
the robot around the object of attachment.
One of the principal goals of entertainment robotics is to provide the illusion
of life in a robot to a human. A strategy we have chosen to follow, in
joint work with Sony Corporation (Arkin, Fujita, Takagi, & Hasegawa, 2001,
2003), is to develop a computational model of behavior based on ethology.
In this work, we engage the concept of motivational behavior in nonhuman
animals, specifically dogs, with that of emotionality experienced in humans.
One of the goals is to produce appropriate emotional responses in people
through observation and interaction with a robotic artifact. This requires