An Overview of Affective Motivational Collaboration Theory

The capability of collaboration is critical in the design of symbiotic cognitive systems. To obtain this functional capability, a cognitive system should possess evaluative and communicative processes. Emotions and their underlying processes provide such functions in social and collaborative environments. We investigate the mutual influence of affective and collaboration processes in a cognitive theory to support the interaction between humans and robots or virtual agents. We have developed new algorithms for these processes, as well as a new overall computational model for implementing collaborative robots and agents. We build primarily on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions and the SharedPlans theory of collaboration to investigate the structure, fundamental processes and functions of emotions in a collaboration context.