SynapticNulship

Creating a robot with emotions is a software development problem.

How does the zebra feel right now?

Emotion is a matter of cognitive architecture.  It is part of the information system of the mind.  Recreating “emotions” really means recreating a type of mind that uses internal mechanisms similar to our minds.  Making an emotional machine requires the proper design and implementation and deployment.

The reason I added “deployment” in there is because environment is quite important.  The mind is a system that interacts with other entities—there is an information flow.  The level of externalism required affects how situated and/or embodied an artificial agent has to be.  That is where robots come in.  However, a robot and its world can be simulated.

What Do I Mean by Architecture?

The metaphor of architecture lets us think of the mind as a building.  But really I mean a large building that was built from millions of interlocking parts and took months or years to design.  And as with buildings, a mind is not just designed and built—it also has to survive the real world.

The metaphor breaks down a bit when you consider how natural minds emerge from ever-changing, growing (or shrinking), adaptable, flexible bags of meat.  However, in their own slow way buildings do change via maintenance and new additions, and they are in fact flexible and movable so as to survive wind and earthquakes.

Of equal or greater importance, I also think of architecture here in its software engineering usage [1]:

Architecture is the fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.

Why Do We Need an Entire Architecture?

One might think that a programmer could just add in some emotion—make a few calls to the emotion function, or tack on a loosely coupled Emotion module.  But based on the best theories so far from researchers, emotions are actually many things going in the mind.  And they are all inherent in the system and intertwined with evolutionarily old parts.  In other words, if you ripped out all the stuff related to emotions, you wouldn’t have much left.  In future posts I will go into the details of potential architectures and why there are certain dependencies.

References:
[1] IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems: IEEE Std 1472000. 2000. via P. Eeles, “What is a software architecture?”

Image credits:
1. safari-partners
2. Marko Ljubez

I just rediscovered some photos of a robot I threw together in about an hour back in 2003.

Mini-Me v.1

Mini-Me v.1

This was made out of an Innovation First educational robot kit which came with the official FIRST robotics kit (which also had parts made by Innovation First). The small edu kit later evolved into the VEX robotics kit. They also make a cool little toy called Hexbug.

Hexbug

I had been spending a lot of time in a basement laboratory at Northeastern University, primarily to advise the FIRST team hosted there (the NU-Trons). This little robot had the same computer as the real competition robot, so it was useful as a programming testbed. Eventually it was dubbed “Mini-Me.”

Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) from Austin Powers 2

The photos of the Mini-Me robot only show the original configuration.  Later on, the infrared sensors on the front were turned downward and I programmed it to be a simple line follower, as we were thinking about having the big FIRST robot do that as well.

Simple linetracking finite state machine diagram

Illustrating a line tracking robot's potentially zig-zag path during a competition

Of course, being an optimistic college student, I designed a more complicated program of which the line tracker was one component.

Subsumption architecture diagram for a FIRST robot

Program flowchart

But we never finished that on the final system (the big robot) as we spent most of our time on less glamorous tasks like soldering.

The NU-Trons robot (#125) from 2003 (here it is being teleoperated)

It was a good lesson in systems though—the amount of time for testing and integration is massive. With robots, most people never get to the interesting programming because it takes so long to make anything work at all. These robot kits help though, at least for programmers, because you don’t have to waste as much time reinventing the wheel.

Later on I used some of those Innovation First edu kit mechanical parts as part of my MicroMouse robot. Unfortunately I don’t think any photos were ever taken of that. Just imagine something awesome.

Whereas in America we’ve been wasting our robot races on autonomous cars that can drive on real roads without causing Michael Bay levels of collateral damage, Japan has taken a more subtle approach.

Their “history making” bipedal robot race involves expensive toy robots stumbling through 422 laps of a 100 meter course, which is followed by visually tracking colored tape on the ground (I’m making an assumption there–the robots may actually be even less capable than that).  This is surely one of the most ingenious ways to turn old technology into a major new PR event.

I assume they weren't remote controlling these "autonomous" robots during the race.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any video or photos of the 100 meter course; instead I have this:

And the winner is…Robovie PC!  Through some uncanny coincidence, that was operated by the Vstone team, the creators of the race.

Robovie PC sprints through the miniature finish line. The robots on the sides are merely finish line holder slaves.

The practical uses of this technology are numerous.  For instance, if you happen to have 42.2 km of perfectly level and flat hallways with no obstructions, one of these robots can follow colored tape around all day without a break(down), defending the premises from vile insects and dust bunnies.

There's no doubt that in the next competition, they will continue to improve their survival capabilities.

During my adventures through the mysterious evo-devo circus freakshow known as childhood, I found myself encountering a lot of science fiction stories and art from 1950s-1970s. Old issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that I recovered from the dump were just as interesting to my larval mind as pornography.

The one cover that I remember the most was Mel Hunter’s depiction of a retro-futuristic vacuum tube powered robot, sitting alone in a post-apocalyptic world, listening to a vinyl record.  This was one of several covers by Hunter featuring the lonely robot.

May 1960 issue of F&SF

Recently, I saw the painting in real life (unless it was a reproduction?) at Boskone, a science fiction literature convention in Boston.

Photo of Mel Hunter painting at Boskone 48

Some people might assume that the lonely robot had something to do with the apocalypse. However, I interpret it to show the sad fate of a robot more rugged than biological life.

The image reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains.” In that story, a home automation system continues working day after day despite that all the humans are gone, like an artificial mega-Jeeves except without the kind of common sense that would make it realize its owners were dead. One day the house is destroyed by a fire.

Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”