Multilevel Emotion Modeling for Autonomous Agents

In this article, we propose the design of sensory motor level as part of a three-layered agent architecture inspired from the Multilevel Process Theory of Emotion (Leventhal 1979, 1980; Leventhal and Scherer, 1987). Our project aims at modeling emotions on an autonomous embodied agent, Petra, a more robust robot than our previous prototype Cherry. Our robot has been equipped with sonar and vision for obstacle avoidance as well as vision for face recognition, which are used when she roams around the hallway to engage in social interactions with humans. The sensory motor level receives and processes inputs and produces emotion-like states without any further willful planning or learning. We describe: (1) the psychological theory of emotion which inspired our design, (2) our proposed agent architecture, (3) the needed hardware additions that we implemented on the commercialized ActivMedia’s robot, (4) Petra’s multimodal interface designed especially to engage humans in natural (and hopefully pleasant) social interaction, and finally (5) our future research efforts.