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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.

Intelligence is a set of mental abilities that enables a human to comprehend, reason and adapt in the environment, and as a result, act effectively and purposefully in that environment. Emotions play a crucial role in humans’ explanation of intelligent behaviors. Emotions affect not only what people do, but also the way they do it (Cowie, Sussman, and Ben-Ze’ev 2011). Sousa in The Rationality of Emotion (1990) makes a case for claiming that humans are capable of rationality largely because they are creatures with emotions. Emotions significantly impact different procedures of goal management and action generation, execution, control, and interpretation (Zhu and Thagard 2002). Emotions are dynamic episodes that not only make changes in cognitive states, but also produce a sequence of response patterns on one …