Emotional machines: The next revolution

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the motor that fuels the most profound revolution in the history of humankind. The new era of information society, even called “the Fourth Revolution”, has produced deep changes into sciences, economies, and societies. This revolution is not only about formal heuristics, or the called “algorithmic society”, but also is explicitly related to the creation of strong interactions between humans and machines. Consequently, these machines must be able to deal with the most intrinsic feature of human nature: emotions. If emotions had been historically considered as disturbing elements of human rationality, the neurological revolution and new experimental tools such as magnetic scanning of the brain (with great success for fMRI) made possible a complete Copernican turn into the evaluation of the role of emotions in cognitive frameworks. This process led experts in natural and artificial cognition to consider the necessity of including emotions into their models. Affective computing or social robotics increased not only the necessity of studies about how to improve the emotional interaction between humans and machines but also how to design cognitive architectures which included biomimetic elements related with emotions. The range of emotional aspects with fundamental interest for robot engineers and experts is comprehensive: human–robot interaction, robot task-planning, energy management, social robotics, body design, care robotics, service robotics, among a very long list. Practically, there is no field related to robotic and AI which is not directly or indirectly related to the implementation of emotional values. Moreover, embodiment is not a mandatory aspect for considering such emotional elements, because their role embraces fundamental mechanisms of thinking, with a distinctive and relevant role in all those things related with creativity and complex evaluations. Hence, the research investments on emotional robotics have turned from a particular and collateral aspect of robotics and AI studies, to occupy a fundamental and growing area among experts. Emotional or Kansai designs are even becoming standard procedures today. At the same time, there is a huge demand for social robots and intelligent systems, which must also connect with the Internet of Things. The challenges for the understanding, design and implementation of artificial systems which use emotional values for their multimodal and holistic (or general) functioning is, consequently, one of the most critical and fundamental aspects of contemporary researches.