Emotions in robot design

Investigates the role emotions might play in robot design. It is argued that if one wants to deal with this problem one first has to develop a profound understanding of the mechanisms underlying behaviors which are called emotional. To investigate the relation between behavior and mechanism the "New Fungus Eater" approach is proposed, which is a minimalist bottom-up approach. It is shown that often one can achieve certain desired behaviors with surprisingly cheap designs if the dynamics of the system-environment interaction is appropriately taken into account. The authors conclude by pointing out major differences between traditional and robot programming.<>