Chapter 36. Emotive Creatures

Key Topics

• Emotions Within Human Evolution

• Biological Models for Emotion

• From Emotions to Artificial Intelligence

• Human/Machine Interaction

• Emotion in Games

Many people have love/hate relationships with their emotions. Sometimes, moods are very enjoyable, and in other cases they seem utterly useless. What purpose do emotions have in biological creatures, and why do synthetic creatures need them?

The next few pages provide a preliminary survey of emotions in biological and synthetic creatures and examine their role in computer games.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• The background of human emotions in evolutionary terms

• Biologically inspired emotional systems and their approach

• The relationship between emotions and intelligence

• Emotions as improving believability in human interaction (including a few examples)

• The role of emotions in computer games

This chapter lays the foundation for the next chapter, which contains examples and a practical AI developer's perspective on artificial emotions.