A GOAL-DIRECTED RATIONAL COMPONENT FOR EMOTIONAL AGENTS Antonio Camurri and Gualtiero Volpe DIST - University of Genova Italy 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

Purpose Enhancing human-computer interaction mainly in multimodal environments where music, dance, movements of robots, visual media and, in general, non- verbal mechanisms are the main channel of communication between humans and machines. 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

The general architecture for emotional agents 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

Interaction between rationality and emotion In this work, we considered three main mechanisms of interaction between rationality and emotions: The direct dependence of the rational evolving knowledge on the current emotional state The mechanism of action selection on the basis of the current rational and emotional states The mechanism of goal selection on the basis of the current rational and emotional states as well as on the basis of the personality of the agent. 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI " The rational component architecture INPUT OUTPUT PRODUCTION SYSTEM ACTION SELECTION GOAL MANAGEMENT RATIONAL COMPONENT facts EI KI goal GOALS actions selected action action to execute KI = “Kansei” Information EI = Environmental Information success/failure

A goal management component INFORMATION PROCESSING LAST GOAL DECISION MAKING ALGORITHM goals KI EI selected goal decision making parameters values of attributes DECISION TABLE success/failure 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

A decision making algorithm The decision maker can utilize a multiattribute decision making algorithm. In this case, the goals are alternative among which the decision maker makes its choice depending on the values of some attributes. We are utilizing three attributes: Priority: suitability of a goal with respect to the external world Importance: suitability of a goal with respect to agent’s personality, feelings and emotions Easiness: feasibility of a goal 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

A decision making algorithm We are testing a decision making algorithm that is a simple variation of the classical Hurwicz’s multiattribute method: “Between the goals having priority value x i1  x 0 (x 0 threshold), the set of the selected goals is A* such that: with z ij = w j x ij and w j weights such that ”. 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

The rational component at work 1. The rational input processes the inputs and generates kansei information and environmental information 2. The goal management and action selection components update their parameters on the basis of kansei information and environmental information 3. The production system calculates a new rational state 4. The goal management component verifies the state of the current active goal: if it succeeds or fails, emotional stimuli are produced as outputs and a new goal is selected 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

The rational component at work 5. The production system determines a set of rationally equivalent and applicable actions 6. The action selector chooses the action to execute 7. The production system verifies if the action is immediately executable 8. If it is, instructions are sent to output, else the production system decomposes the complex action in subgoals with a top-down method and comes back to 5. The rational component repeats the action selection process until the action selector chooses an executable action 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI "

Implementation and tests 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI " We employed the general architecture in several real applications including the permanent science museum exhibit for children “Città dei Bambini” at Porto Antico, Genova where the Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale realized the “Music Atelier”. art installation at “Arti Visive 2” exhibition Palazzo Ducale, Genova The rational component has been implemented and we are testing it in the previous application domains, i.e. in tools for teaching by playing and cultural and museum applications.

Conclusions and future work 10/04/1999 " AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI " The rational component supports a rational state evolving on the basis of both rational and emotional knowledge and a selection of the current goal and action not only on rational and emotional basis but also depending on the personality of the agent. However, our model has currently some limitations. Here follow some directions of our future research: Several goals at the same time Enhancing action management Learning capabilities Planning