Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
Functions of Emotion
Emotions play an essential role in rational decision making, per-
ception, learning and a variety of other cognitive functions.
In
fact, too little emotion can impair decision making. [2]
In his topic
Emotional Design
, published in 2004, Donald Norman ar-
gues that in the future machines will
need
emotions, and for exactly the
same reasons that people do:
The human emotional system plays an essential role for survival,
social interaction and co-operation, and learning. Machines will
need a form of emotion—machine emotion—when they face the
same conditions, when they must operate continuously without
any assistance from people in the complex, ever-changing world
where new situations continually arise. As machines become more
and more capable, taking over many of our activities, designers face
the complex task of deciding just how they shall be constructed,
just how they will interact with one another and with people. Thus,
for the same reason that animals and people have emotions, I be-
lieve that machines will also need them. They need not be human
emotions, mind you, but rather emotions that are tuned to the
requirements of the machines themselves. [3]
Norman's last sentence assumes that robots and humans will be suffi-
ciently different in the future that the complete range of human emotions
will not necessarily be appropriate for robots. I disagree. The robots of
the mid-twenty-first century will be so humanlike in some respects that
all human emotions will be evident in robots. Where, I believe, the ro-
bot and human emotion sets will differ, is that robots will be so far in
advance of humans in many ways that, in addition to possessing all the
human emotions, robots will also have a supplementary set of emotions,
hitherto unrecognised, that are necessary and appropriate for them but
which would not be appropriate for humans.
Psychological Theories of Emotion
Research psychologists have long been studying emotion, with the re-
sult that several different theories now exist as to the nature of emotion
and how our emotions relate to our actions. William James and Carl
Lange believe that actions precede emotions and that our actions gen-
erate physiological responses in us which, in turn, create our emotions.
