Emotional Robots???

Can robots feel emotions?

A lot of people would respond, “Of course not! Robots are just a bunch of wires and metal!” Though this may be true, the rapidly growing field of Artificial Intelligence is starting to spark some interest in such questions.

Kismet, is a robot that has been built at MIT. This robot is very unique. “She” is able to mimic human emotional expression, as well as recognize different human emotional responses. For example, when someone speaks to her in a gentle tone of voice, she acts happy by actually smiling and raising her eye brows. When someone speaks to her in a loud, aggressive tone of voice, she frowns and acts submissive by retreating.

The main features of the robot Kismet is her auditory, visual and expressive systems. Her facial features consist of eyebrows, ears, eyelids, jaw, lips and a head. There are little cameras in her eyes that allow her to have a field of vision and display abilities such as eye detection. There are four microprocessors needed to execute the perception system, motivational system, behavioral system, motor skill system, and the face motor system. It takes another nine (400MHz) PC’s to control the visual processing, visual attention, and the eye/neck motor functions! Talk about high maintenance!

Though Kismet is obviously a machine, it is that crazy to think that one day machines WILL be able to feel? That’s a question left for you to ponder….for now.

Kismet the robot- Some facts

Watch Kismet in action!

Theories of Emotion

In today’s science, emotion is often correlated with neurological and bodily changes. For example, when one experiences fear, the bodily changes often include an increase of heart rate, a tension of the muscles and sweating. Below are a few examples of such somatic theories of emotion:

James-Lange theory of emotion-

This theory suggests that emotion is the result of the physiological changes in the nervous system. The order of processes would thus be described as some event, leading to an arousal of physiological changes, which then leads to interpretations of the feelings which ARE what we call, emotions. A real world example of this would be one seeing a bear. The muscles tense, heart rate increases. Our perceptions of these feelings result as an emotion, fear. This theory suggests that the physiological changes are the emotions.

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion-

This theory suggests that physiological changes and the experienced emotions happen simultaneously, rather than emotions occurring as an interpretation of physiological changes as stated in the James-Lange Theory. Stated another way, emotions are interpreted from the situation, rather than the bodily changes. Using the bear example, under this theory, one would see a bear, then experience fear simultaneously with the physiological changes such as an increase in heart rate and the tensing of muscles.

Two Factor Theory of Emotion (Schacter-Singer Theory)-

This theory of emotion suggests that human emotion consists of two factors; a physiological arousal and ones understanding of that arousal (interpretation of the bodily changes) and the outside events. In other words, a physiological change is brought on by an outside event (Perception of stimulus). We then associate these bodily changes and the outside event with a label of an emotion. In the bear example, we would perceive a bear and physiological changes would occur. These bodily changes that we feel when we are in the presence of a bear we would interpret as fear, and most likely run away.

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/The_Schachter-Singer_Theory_of_Emotion

http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_emotion.htm

What is an Emotion?

What is human emotion? For decades, the most common way to study emotion was through the study of psychology. In order to do so, psychologists would place a human subject in an experimental situation to study how the human subject might react to their given situation. The psychologists would then use the human subjects behavior as a way to find out questions such as “How does he/she react when put in this kind of situation?”

Recently, new instruments have been developed known as brain imaging machines. These machines can scan your brain and provide certain results. These results often indicate a level of activity in different regions of the brain. Through various types of brain imaging techniques, scientists were able to find what is considered the emotional center of the brain. Scientists call this region of the brain the amygdala. Though the amygdala is often referred to as the brains emotional center, emotions still cause brain activity in all parts of the brain!

Cognitive Science is a relatively new science that doesn’t limit one to studying just the psychology of the human or the neurology of the brain, but incorporates a wide field of scientific perspective, including biology, psychology, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence and philosophy, attempting to uncover some of the most complex mysteries of the brain, such as how emotion is represented in the brain. 

In the next blog, we will take a look at some different theories of emotion. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroimaging