Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
human-pet relationship is simple proof of the hypothesis that two-way
emotional relationships can and do exist and flourish between human
beings and non-humans.
Detecting and understanding emotion and exhibiting emotion will
be essential characteristics of robots before we humans can treat them as
equals. In order to make all this possible in robotics it is first necessary
to classify the different emotions, to examine the characteristics of each
emotion and thereby to develop methods for recognizing each emotion
and simulating it in a robot. Fortunately, the identification and classifi-
cation of emotion types by psychologists has already paved the way for
computer scientists.
Associated with each type of emotion is one or more action or behav-
iour. A robot's software allows it to keep track of its own emotional state,
for example when the value of a robot's happiness measure exceeds a cer-
tain threshold, the robot's software could set its “I am happy” variable to
“true”. When a robot feels a particular emotion, it might exhibit it by
performing an appropriate action or behaviour pattern. (Or the robot
might be programmed to conceal certain emotions unless their strength
of feeling rises to some pre-determined level.) Such a classification will
also help a robot to recognize displays of emotion in others (both human
and robotic).
Humans Feeling Affection for Robots—The Tamagotchi
Not long ago the very idea of millions of adults feeling affection for elec-
tronic objects would be treated by most people with scorn. But just
look at what happened when the Tamagotchi was launched in Novem-
ber 1996 by the Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai. The Tamagotchi, or
“lovable egg,” had a small grey LCD display, three round buttons below
the screen and was small enough to fit into a person's hand (see
Figure
faked its intelligence and emotion well enough to provide pet appeal for
many of its owners. A Tamagotchi would let its owner know when it
wanted her attention. It would beep her and cry for her, and its sounds
would get louder and louder until she give it attention. If she ignored
it the Tamagotchi would misbehave, acting loudly and recklessly. Then
it would fail to respond to affection and would even become (virtually)
physically ill. Sometimes it got virtual diarrhea. With this kind of be-
