Characteristics of behavior of robots with emotion model

A cooperative multirobot system has much dominance over a single-robot system. It is able to adapt to various circumstances and has flexibility for variation of tasks. However, it still has problems of controlling each robot, although methods for control of a multirobot system have been studied. Recently, emotion and sensitivity of the robots have been widely studied. In this study, a human emotion model based on psychological interaction was adapted to a multirobot system to achieve methods for organization of multiple robots. The characteristics of behavior of multirobot systems achieved through computer simulation were analyzed. As a result, very complex and interesting behavior emerged even though it is of rather simple configuration. And it has flexibility in various circumstances. Additional experiments with actual robots will be conducted based on the emotion model. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.