The Importance of the Body in Affect-Modulated Action Selection: A Case Study Comparing Proximal Versus Distal Perception in a Prey-Predator Scenario

In the context of the animat approach, we investigate the effect of an emotion-like hormonal mechanism, as a modulator of perception - and second order controller to an underlying motivation-based action selection architecture - on brain-body-environment interactions within a prey-predator scenario. We are particularly interested in the effects that affective modulation of different perceptual capabilities has on the dynamics of interactions between predator and prey, as part of a broader study of the adaptive value of emotional states such as "fear" and "aggression" in the context of action selection. In this paper we present experiments where we modulated the architecture of a prey robot using two different types of sensory capabilities, proximal and distal, effectively creating combinations of different prey "brains" and "bodies".