Robot’s temperament

Abstract This work explores a perspective on robotic behavior control based on mechanisms that are traditionally implicated in generation of emotions and temperament in humans. It is demonstrated that these complex psychological phenomena can be imitated by very simple means. At the heart of the emotional component of the robot’s architecture is Simonov’s Information Theory of Emotions. The main assumption of this theory is that emotions represent the brain’s estimate of any actual need of the individual together with the probability of its satisfaction. The temperamental component of the model controls the balance of excitation and inhibition within the robot’s cognitive architecture. Experiments were conducted with a couple of simple mobile autonomous robots. Experimental results demonstrate distinct types of behavioral temperament exhibited by the robot, including melancholic, choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic. These types of behavior are determined by “regulators of temperament” in the robot architecture. It is shown that emotions and temperament can be very useful for a robot in complex environments with unknown characteristics. Various in character environments can demand various types of behavior: in quickly changing environments the choleric behavior is more preferable and in stationary ones are phlegmatic, etc. In some sense, different psychological organization of a robot can be considered as a convenient mechanism of adaptation. Emotions and temperament as biologically inspired mechanisms allow us not only to describe but also to control the robot’s behavior in a natural form.