An emotional model for swarm robotics

Abstract

Swarm robotics is a system of multiple robots where a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and with the environment. This paper proposes an emotional model for the robots, to allow emerging behaviors. The emotional model uses four universal emotions: joy, sadness, fear and anger, assigned to each robot based on the level of satisfaction of its basic needs. These emotions lie on a spectrum where, depending on where the emotion of the robot lies, it can affect its behavior and of its neighboring robots. The more negative the emotion is, the more individualistic it becomes in its decisions. The more positive the robot is in its emotion, the more it will consider the group and global goals. Each robot is able to recognize another robot's emotion in the system based on their current state, using the AR2P recognition algorithm. Specifically, the paper addresses emotions’ influence on the behavior of the system, at the individual and collective levels, and the emotions’ effects on the emergent behaviors of a multi-robot system. The paper analyses two emergent scenarios: nectar harvesting and object transportation, and shows the importance of the emotions into the emergent behavior in a multi-robot system.