Page 177 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

160 Socially Intelligent Agents

with the interlocutor, the robot has to be an intentional being capable of goal-
directed spontaneous behavior by itself; otherwise, the empathetic process will
not work.

feel
• • environ-
ment
act
another
(act) (feel)
• •
self

Figure 19.2. Empathy for another person’s behavior.

In order to acquire intentionality, a robot should possess the following: (1)
a sensori-motor system, with which the robot can utilize the affordance in the
environment; (2) a repertoire of behaviors, whose initial contents are innate
reflexes, e.g., grasping whatever the hand touches; (3) a value system that
evaluates what the robot feels exteroceptively and proprioceptively; and (4)
a learning mechanism that reinforces (positively or negatively) a behavior ac-
cording to the value (e.g., pleasure and displeasure) of the result. Beginning
with innate reflexes, which consist of a continuous spectrum of sensori-motor
modalities, the robot explores the gamut of effective (profitable) cause-effect
associations through its interaction with the environment. The robot is gradu-
ally able to use these associations spontaneously as method-goal associations.
We have defined this as the acquisition of intentionality.

4. Being identical

To understand others’ intentions, the intentional robot has to identify itself
with others. This requires it to observe how others feel and act, as shown in
Figure 19.2. Joint attention plays an important role in this understanding [1, 9],
and action capture is also indispensable. Joint attention enables the robot to
observe what others exteroceptively perceive from the environment, and action
capture translates the observed action of others into its own motor program so
that it can produce the same action or proprioception that is attached to that
action.

4.1 Joint attention
1
Joint attention is the act of sharing each other’s attentional focus. It spot-
lights the objects and events being attended to by the participants of communi-
cation, thus creating a shared context in front of them. The shared context is a