Using Emotions on Autonomous Agents. The Role of Happiness, Sadness and Fear.

Miguel Angel Salichs & Maria Malfaz

RoboticsLab, Carlos III University of Madrid
28911 Leganes, Madrid, Spain
salichs@ing.uc3m.es - mmalfaz@ing.uc3m.es

Abstract

This paper addresses the use of emotions on autonomous agents for behaviour-selection learning, focusing in the emotions fear, happiness and sadness. The control architecture is based in a motiva- tional model, which performs homeostatic control of the internal state of the agent. The behaviour- selection is learned by the agent using a Q-learning algorithm while there is no interaction with other agents. In situations where interaction arises (e.g. interacting with other agents), agents rely on stochastic games approaches as a learning strategy. The agent is intrinsically motivated and his final goal is to maximize Happiness. The learning algorithms use happiness/sadness of the agent as posi- tive/negative reinforcement signals. Fear is used to prevent the agent choosing dangerous actions or being in dangerous states where non-controlled exogenous events, produced by external objects or other agents, could danger him. Preliminary tests have been carried out in a virtual world, based in a role-playing game.