Emotion Modeling in Robots
Why would we give emotions to robots? Our research has two goals:
1) Understanding emotions in biological systems (humans and other animals) and their functions. We ask questions such as:
- What are the key features of human and animal emotions that can be shared by autonomous robots in similar environments?
- How do emotions affect behaviour and cognition?
- How did emotions evolve?
- How do they develop through life?
2) Building better robots. We ask questions such as:
- How can emotions help robots to make “good” decisions?
- How can emotions make robots interact with people better?
Answering these questions requires giving robots internal models of emotions in addition to skills to express emotions and recognize emotions.