Abstract
Research in neurobiology has provided evidence that emotions pervade human intelligence at many levels. However, “emotion” and “cognition” are still largely conceptualized as separate notions that “interact”, and untangling and modeling those interactions remains a challenge, both in biological and artificial systems. My research focuses on modeling in autonomous robots how “cognition”, “motivation” and “emotion” interact in what we could term embodied affective cognition, and particularly investigating how affect lies at the root of and drives how agents apprehend and interact with the world, making them “intelligent” in the sense of being able to adapt to their environments in flexible and beneficial ways. In this chapter, I discuss this issue as I illustrate how my embodied model of affect has been used in my group to ground a broad range of affective, cognitive and social skills such as adaptive action selection, different types of learning, development, and social interaction.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Asma, S. T., & Gabriel, R. (2019). The emotional mind. Harvard University Press.
Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (eds.). (2010). Pleasures of the brain. Oxford University Press.
Brooks, R. A. (1991). New approaches to robotics. Science, 253(5025), 1227–1232.
Cañamero, L. (1997). Modeling motivations and emotions as a basis for intelligent behavior. In W. L. Johnson (ed.), First International Conference of Autonomous Agents (Agents’97) (pp. 148–155). ACM Press.
Cañamero, L. (2019). Embodied robot models for interdisciplinary emotion research. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 12(2), 340–351.
Cañamero, L. D., & Lewis, M. (2016). Making new “new AI” friends: Designing a social robot for diabetic children from an embodied AI perspective. International Journal of Social Robotics, 8(4), 523–537.
Colgan, P. (1989). Animal motivation. Springer.
Cos, I., Cañamero, L., & Hayes, G. M. (2010). Learning affordances of consummatory behaviors: Motivation-driven adaptive perception. Adaptive Behavior, 18(3–4), 285–314.
Cos, I., Cañamero, L., Hayes, G. M., & Gillies, A. (2013). Hedonic value: Enhancing adaptation for motivated agents. Adaptive Behavior, 21(6), 465–483.
Crews, D. (2010). Epigenetics, brain, behavior and the environment. Hormones (Athens, Greece), 9(1), 41–50.
Damàsio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error. Avon Books.
Damàsio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace.
De Wolf, M., & van Ijzendoorn, M. (1997). Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment. Child Development, 68, 571–591.
Fowden, A. L., & Forhead, A. J. (2009). Hormones as epigenetic signals in developmental programming. Experimental Physiology, 94(6), 607–625.
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge University Press.
Frijda, N. H. (2010). On the nature and function of pleasure. In K. C. Berridge & M. L. Kringelbach (eds.), Pleasures of the brain (pp. 99–112). Oxford University Press.
Hiolle, A., Lewis, M., & Cañamero, L. (2014). Arousal regulation and affective adaptation to human responsiveness by a robot that explores and learns a novel environment. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 8(17).
Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (1995). Essentials of neural science and behavior. Appleton & Lange.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. Simon & Schuster.
Lewis, M., & Cañamero, L. (2016). Hedonic quality or reward? A study of basic pleasure in homeostasis and decision making of a motivated autonomous robot. Adaptive Behavior, 24(5), 267–291.
Lones, J., Lewis, M., & Cañamero, L. (2016). From sensorimotor experiences to cognitive development: Investigating the influence of experiential diversity on the development of an epigenetic robot. Frontiers in Robotics and A, I, 3.
Lones, J., Lewis, M., & Cañamero, L. (2017/2018). A hormone-driven epigenetic mechanism for adaptation in autonomous robots. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 10(2), 445–454.
Malik, S., McGlone, F., Bedrossian, D., & Dagher, A. (2008). Ghrelin modulates brain activity in areas that control appetitive behavior. Cell Metabolism, 7(5), 400–409.
Nadel, J. & Muir, D. (2004). Emotional development: Recent research advances. Oxford University Press.
Oudeyer, P. Y., Gottlieb, J., & Lopes, M. (2016). Intrinsic motivation, curiosity, and learning: Theory and applications in educational technologies. Progress in Brain Research, 229, 257–284.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Oxford University Press.
Pessoa, L. (2013). The cognitive-emotional brain: From interactions to integration. The MIT Press.
Pfeifer, R., Iida, F., & Bongard, J. (2005). New robotics: Design principles for intelligent systems. Artificial Life, 11(1–2), 99–120.
Schulkin, J. (2004). Allostasis, homeostasis, and the costs of physiological adaptation. Cambridge University Press.
Scarantino, A. (2014). The motivational theory of emotions. In J. D’Arms & D. Jacobson (eds.), Moral psychology and human agency. Philosophical essays on the science of ethics (pp. 156–185). Oxford University Press.
Steels, L. (1995). When are robots intelligent autonomous agents? Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 15(1–2), 3–9.
Tomkins, S. S. (1984). Affect theory. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 163–195). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Zhang, X., & Ho, S.-M. (2011). Epigenetics meets endocrinology. Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, 46(1), R11–R32.
Acknowledgements
The writing of this paper and the work reported here were carried out when I was a faculty member at the University of Hertfordshire. I am grateful to the past and present members of my group, the Embodied Emotion, Cognition and (Inter-)Action Lab, for their contributions to various aspects of the research discussed here, and to the organizers and participants of the “Emotional Machines” workshop for fruitful and insightful discussions. Funding for the research reported here was provided partly by the European Commission through grants HUMAINE (FP6-IST–507422), FEELIX GROWING (FP6-IST–045169), and ALIZ-E (FP7-ICT–248116), and partly by the University of Hertfordshire through various PhD studentships. The opinions expressed are solely the author’s.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cañamero, L. (2023). When Emotional Machines Are Intelligent Machines: Exploring the Tangled Knot of Affective Cognition with Robots. In: Misselhorn, C., Poljanšek, T., Störzinger, T., Klein, M. (eds) Emotional Machines. Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft / Futures of Technology, Science and Society. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37641-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37641-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-37640-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-37641-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)