Department of Mechanical System Engineering
College of Computer Science and System Engineering
Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680 Kawatsu, Iizuka-city
Fukuoka, 820 Japan
It may not be possible to give a precise, quantitative definition of "emotion" to be embedded in a mobile robot. However, emotion is what subjectively activates behavior, is aroused by obstr uction of behavior, and is objectively visible through behavior. This idea about emotion is included in the concept of consciousness by the Vietnamese philosopher, Tran (Tran, 1951). According to him, emotion is part of consciousness aroused if the behavior is inhibited. Tran proposed a conceptual model of the relationship between consciousness and behavior based on a currently accepted assumption that the mental process of an animal has developed in the phylogeny from single-celled animals to humans, just as human consciousness develops in its ontogeny. According to his model based on the analysis of human consciousness, a level of consciousness activated selects and produces an action on the immediately higher level than the level of inhibited behavior.
We have designed a software architecture, Consciousness-based Architecture (CCA), to integrate both adaptive animal-like behaviors and more symbolic behaviors. The feasibility of the architecture was tested by computer simulation and an experiment of the behaviors of two imaginary animals, to include sleep, reflex action, approach, and detour (Kitamura, 1995 and 1998). This study shows the model design for behavior selection in CCA and also demonstrates the results of the experiment using two criteria, functions of object-dependent emotion values.