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The role of emotions has been underestimated in the field of robotics. We claim that emotions are relevant for the building of purposeful artificial systems from at least two perspectives: a cognitive and a phenomenological one. The cognitive aspect is relevant for at least two reasons. First, emotions could be the basis for binding between internal values and different external situations (the somatic marker theory). Second emotions could play a crucial role, during development, both for taking difficult decisions whose effects are not immediately verifiable and for the creation of more complex behavioral functions. Thus emotions can be seen, from a cognitive point of view, as a reinforcement stimulus and in this respect, they can be modeled in an artificial being. Inasmuch, emotions can be seen as a medium for linking rewards and values to external situations. From the phenomenological perspective, we accept the division between feelings and emotions. Emotions are, in James' words, the body theatre in which several emotions are represented and feelings are the mental phenomenological perception of them. We could say that feelings are the qualia of the body events we could call emotions. We are using this model of emotions in the development of our project: Babybot. We stress the importance of emotions during learning and development as endogenous teaching devices.

DOI: 10.1142/9789812810687_0036