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Chapter XVIII
Artificial Emotional Intelligence
in Virtual Creatures
Félix Francisco Ramos Corchado
Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Guadalajara, Mexico
Héctor Rafael Orozco Aguirre
Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Guadalajara, Mexico
Luis Alfonso Razo Ruvalcaba
Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Guadalajara, Mexico
abStRact
Emotions play an essential role in the cognitive processes of an avatar and are a crucial element for
modeling its perception, learning, decision process, behavior and other cognitive functions. Intense
emotions can affect significantly the behavior of an avatar in a virtual environment, for instance, driving its behavior unstable as the consequence of deep emotional influence. The response of an avatar to such influence is the development of the capacity to recognize and manage emotions. In this work we describe a new faculty called Artificial Emotional Intelligence (AEI), and we propose a model based on
Emotional Intelligence (EI) to develop a new approach to the problem of mood and emotion control.
This approach applies the concept of EI and provides the needed tools to make avatars have AEI. In
addition, we use the Emotional Competence Framework (ECF) to define and apply the personal and social competencies of an avatar.
intRoduction
Nowadays the connection between a Human being
and computer based systems is growing stronger.
Many innovations appear, for instance, robot toys
like Pleo, Robosapiens or Honda Robot, and even
conventional computers with the ability to control
complex systems, such as virtual reality worlds.
Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
The Use of Artificial Emotional Intelligence in Virtual Creatures
This phenomenon shows that human-computer
interaction (HCI) is deeper than just the delegation of work to the machine. This remark makes
evident two fields of research. The first one is the
physiological field, and the second one is the psychological field that proposes models that represent
emotions in computer based systems. In this work
we deal with the second field of research.
Today a large number of studies about emotions exist and there are several models of emotion proposed in the literature, unfortunately we
cannot know for sure which models are correct.
In this chapter we deal with the problem of expressing corporal emotions. The main issue is
that expressing emotions is completely subjective
for everyone. This fact makes very difficult the
establishment of general models for emotions.
An alternate approach explored in this chapter
consists in designing a model based on some
observations on the behavior of Human being.
Psychologists traditionally single out three types
of human intelligence: Abstract Intelligence that
denotes the ability of Human being to understand and manipulate verbal and mathematical
symbols, Concrete Intelligence which indicates
the capacity of Human being to understand and
manipulate objects, and Social Intelligence that
allows the Human being to understand other
individuals and to interact with them. The EI of
Human being has its roots in the Social Intelligence (SI), which is divided in two categories:
Interpersonal Intelligence as ability to understand
other people and Intrapersonal Intelligence as
self-consciousness.
Emotions are an important aspect in the functioning of the human mind. Nevertheless, the role
that emotions play in our actions, behavior and
thinking has been misapprehended and misinterpreted. The old philosophers did not consider the
emotions as an important aspect of human intelligence, by the contrary they perceived the emotions as an impediment that blocks and prevents
the human reasoning and thought. In the Plato’s
Phaedo dialogue, Plato explained that fears, pas-
sions and desires make thinking and reasoning
impossible. Later, Descartes based on the same
idea his defining of emotions as passions or needs
that the body imposes on the mind.
Recently, several psychologists have begun
the exploration and study of emotions to explain
better their functioning, which is an important
component of the human intelligence and cognition. The obtained results give evidence that
emotions have an important impact on thinking,
judgment, reasoning, memory and decision making of Human being. Gardner (1983) introduced
the term of Multiple Intelligences for describing
the personal intelligence as a type of human
intelligence that includes social interactions and
emotions. Damasio (1994; 1995) demonstrated
in neurological studies that people who lack the
capacity of emotional response can take incorrect decisions and execute mistaken actions that
can limit their performance in society. Basing
on the fact that emotions are an important part
of human intelligence, Goleman (1995) coined
the concept of EI.
Many psychological models have been proposed to describe the emotional functioning of the
human brain and the mental processes. Several
models are centered on the effect of motivational
states or on the processes by which the events
trigger certain emotions. Such models are called
event appraisal models. Other models examine the
influence of expectations on emotions. But none
of these models presents complete abstraction and
shows general idea. In these models the emotions
are considered to be mental states generated with
the use of mapping that includes great variety of
considerations, such as expectations, motivational
states, events, and environmental conditions.
Inspired by the psychological models of emotion, many researchers have recognized in Artificial Intelligence (AI) the importance and utility
for improving complex, dynamic and interactive
virtual environments with the help of the computational models of emotions. Designed models
of emotions can represent a better understanding
351
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