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Emotions in robot psychology

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Abstract

In his famous thought experiments on synthetic vehicles, Valentino Braitenberg stipulated that simple stimulus-response reactions in an organism could evoke the appearance of complex behavior, which, to the unsuspecting human observer, may even appear to be driven by emotions such as fear, aggression, and even love (Braitenberg, Vehikel. Experimente mit künstlichen Wesen, Lit Verlag, 2004). In fact, humans appear to have a strong propensity to anthropomorphize, driven by our inherent desire for predictability that will quickly lead us to discern patterns, cause-and-effect relationships, and yes, emotions, in animated entities, be they natural or artificial. But might there be reasons, that we should intentionally “implement” emotions into artificial entities, such as robots? How would we proceed in creating robot emotions? And what, if any, are the ethical implications of creating “emotional” robots? The following article aims to shed some light on these questions with a multi-disciplinary review of recent empirical investigations into the various facets of emotions in robot psychology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Factors Institute, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, 85577 , Neubiberg, Germany

    V. Nitsch & M. Popp

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  1. V. Nitsch
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  2. M. Popp
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Correspondence to V. Nitsch.

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This article forms part of a special issue of Biological Cybernetics entitled “Structural Aspects of Biological Cybernetics: Valentino Braitenberg, Neuroanatomy, and Brain Function”.

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Nitsch, V., Popp, M. Emotions in robot psychology. Biol Cybern 108, 621–629 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-014-0594-6

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