AIBO as a Needs-Based Companion Dog

In this paper we describe the architecture that allows the modeling of an emotionally intelligent robotic companion dog. We chose to implement this architecture for AIBO, which is a dog-like autonomous robot, developed by Sony. AIBO was developed as an entertainment robot and its ‘mind’ is programmable. The focus of this paper is on creating a complex personality model that provides a realistic needs-oriented behavior for robotic companion dogs. The personality model is an extension of the nPME model and implies that needs play the most important role and influence the behavior of the AIBO robot in every situation. Personality, Mood and Emotions are three layers that, in combination with the needs, make AIBO show a real doglike behavior. The existing personality models need to be modified, adaptated and improved so as to handle the unknown and dynamic environment in which AIBO performs. So, as part of the system design, the importance of incoming events has been considered. A modification in this architecture modeling the function of amygdale has been introduced to speed up the resolution of some situations. The implemented architecture is also designed to be suitable for future extensions in the model. The prototype has been tested in different scenarios using an AIBO robot. An extensive user study has been carried on involving several students and workers to test the realism, emotional responses and event coherency in robot’s behavior.