Damasio’s somatic marker for social robotics: Preliminary implementation and test

Lorenzo Cominelli, Daniele Mazzei, Michael Pieroni, Abolfazl Zaraki, Roberto Garofalo, Danilo De Rossi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

How experienced emotional states, induced by the events that emerge in our context, influence our behaviour? Are they an obstacle or a helpful assistant for our reasoning process? Antonio Damasio gave exhaustive answers to these questions through his studies on patients with brain injuries. He demonstrated how the emotions guide decisionmaking and he has identified a region of the brain which has a fundamental role in this process. Antoine Bechara devised a test to validate the proper functioning of that cortical region of the brain. Inspired from Damasio’s theories we developed a mechanism in an artificial agent that enables it to represent emotional states and to exploit them for biasing its decisions. We also implement the card gambling task that Bechara used on his patients as a validating test. Finally we put our artificial agent through this test for 100 trials. The results of this experiment are analysed and discussed highlighting the demonstrated efficiency of the implemented somatic marker mechanism and the potential impact of this system in the field of social robotics.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationBiomimetic and Biohybrid Systems - 4th International Conference, Living Machines 2015, Proceedings
EditorsPaul F.M.J. Verschure, Stuart P. Wilson, Tony J. Prescott, Anna Mura
PublisherSpringer Nature Link
Pages316-328
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783319229782
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015
Event4th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2015 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 28 Jul 201531 Jul 2015

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9222
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference4th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2015
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period28/07/1531/07/15

Keywords

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Cognitive systems
  • Decision-making
  • Emotion
  • Human-inspired
  • Reinforcement learning
  • Somatic marker hypothesis

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Damasio’s somatic marker for social robotics: Preliminary implementation and test'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this