Artificial Emotions as Dynamic Modulators of Individual and Group Behavior in Multi-robot System

Jérôme Guzzi (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (USI-SUPSI), Alessandro Giusti (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (USI-SUPSI), Luca M. Gambardella (Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (USI-SUPSI), Gianni A. Di Caro (Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar)

Abstract

We propose a model for adaptation and implicit coordination in multi-robot systems based on the definition of artificial emotions, which play two main roles: modulators of individual robot behavior, and means of communication among different robots for systemlevel social coordination. We model emotions as compressed representations of a robot's internal state that are subject to a dynamics influenced by internal and external conditions; they can be efficiently exposed to nearby robots, allowing to achieve local, group-level behavior adaptation and modulation, with minimal computational and bandwidth requirements.