On Realizing Emotional Memories

Abstract

Emotion and memory have been two intermingled areas in psychological research. Although researchers are still fairly clueless on how human emotions or memory work, several attempts have been made to copy the dynamics of these two entities in the realm of robotics. This chapter describes one such attempt to capture the dynamics of human emotional memories and model the same for use in a real robot. Emotional memories are created at extreme emotional states, namely, very positive or happy events or very negative ones. The positive ones result in the formation of positive memories while the negative ones form the negative counterparts. The robotic system seeks the positive ones while it tries to avoid the negative ones. Such memories aid the system in making the right decisions, especially when situations similar to the one which caused their generation, repeat in the future. This chapter introduces the manner in which a multi-agent emotion engine churns out the emotions which in turn generate emotional memories. Results obtained from simulations and those from using a real situated robot described herein, validate the working of these memories.