1. Autonomy Control Software: Lessons from the Emotional Paolo Petta paolo@ai.univie.ac.at Austrian Research Institute for AI Vienna, Austria Rodrigo Ventura, Carlos Pinto-Ferreira yoda@isr.ist.utl.pt, cpf@isr.ist.utl.pt Institute for Systems and Robotics Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa, Portugal

2. Appraisal theory of emotions The emotion process is...

3. Appraisal theory of emotions The emotion process is... …a stimulus event driven concern satisfaction system stimulus event driven: not goal-directed concerns: “more basic” notion than e.g.drives short- to long-term dispositions to desire the (non-)occurrence of a situation/state remain silent as long as conditions conform to standards within “reasonable bounds” unfulfilled concerns may exist without one being aware of them until events/thoughts make them become known as “desires”

4. Appraisal theory of emotions The emotion process is... …a situated dual control system dual control is widespread in biological systems allows for more fine-grained control dual modes: action tendency generation regulation

5. Appraisal theory of emotions The emotion process comprises... …action tendency generation action tendencies: available resources to achieve or maintain a given kind of relationship with the environment are put in a state of readiness differ from intentions by being driven away from the appraised stimulus rather than attracted towards a specific goal state intentions/plans may be set up to achieve the aim of an action tendency

6. Appraisal theory of emotions Action tendency generation: –perception of a situation –assessment of valenced relevance –assessment of coping potential, urgency –action tendency change proposal

7. Appraisal theory of emotions Action tendency generation: –perception of a situation = assessment of the situation w.r.t. current concerns: what the situation…... does/might hold/offer/withhold... allows/prevents/invites to do; evaluation of possible outcomes as desirable/undesirable

8. Appraisal theory of emotions The emotion process comprises –action tendency generation –regulation inhibition (prewired, automatic) outcome controlled processes (learned) voluntary actions (based on anticipation, explicit model)

9. Appraisal theory of emotions Emotional experience

10. Appraisal theory of emotions Emotional experience –awareness of meaning of situation: e.g. that can be “seen”: a cliff is as dangerous as it is deep, a jump is as difficult as it is wide,…

11. Appraisal theory of emotions Emotional experience –awareness of meaning of situation –awareness of autonomic arousal: not prerequisite, but used e.g. in the acquisition of learned responses (reinforced), intensional coding: body markers

12. Appraisal theory of emotions Emotional experience –awareness of meaning of situation –awareness of autonomic arousal: –awareness of its sense requires prior existence of expectations; otherwise: mere “feelings” whose significance is conceptually reconstructed (error-prone!)

13. Appraisal theory of emotions Significance of the emotional experience –getting acquainted with one´s subjective world and oneself –update of one´s self-image –acquisition of (part of) one´s world model and model of itself iñ a manner that is adaptable over time

14. Appraisal theory of emotions Significance of the emotional experience (ctd.) –emotions are elicited when the system recognizes stimuli as blocking or permitting the completion of action tendencies, or as related to actual pain/satisfaction –conceptualization of emotions may be based on different categorization of inputs/stimuli and therefore be at odds with the actual cause

15. Conclusions Functional models of emotions may give an inspiration for how to progress from task-oriented/goal-oriented architectures to “truly situated” environment-driven control They combine analog/intensional and conceptual/extensional world models Still: for our work, “emotions” are but “crutches”!