Analysis Of The Science Of Star Wars By Jeanne Cavelos

Though The Science of Star Wars by Jeanne Cavelos is a thorough and engaging text with a great deal of analysis done on five main characteristics of the Star Wars Universe (Planetary Systems, Aliens, Droids, Weapons, and The Force), I found only one section that truly piqued my curiosity--Droids. More specifically, I became interested in the role of emotions and how they influence the day to day dealings of robots (also knows as artificial intelligence agents, believable agents, or simply agents). As I began my research it became apparent that many scientists take a skeptical and doubtful approach to the idea that for a robot to function optimally it must employ both logic and emotion to accomplish tasks, make decisions, and simply benefit

During my research I found that there was a great deal of overlap in the themes each work presented. I attempted to consolidate the many reasons that emotional intelligence is a positive force in robotics into a few basic categories and was successful; I drafted five tenets that I feel explain the potential use of emotion. The first of these would be that emotion could be a useful gauge for a robot to evaluate and address its needs to achieve homeostasis. In a work entitled Designing Sociable Robots by Cynthia L. Breazeal, the motivation and emotion systems are explored in depth. In chapter eight, the author supplies a summary of what motivation in animals looks like and explains that it is ultimately the drive to survive the situations it faces as well as the environment it lives in. She references a known definition by writing that, "Early ethologists used the term motivation to broadly refer to the apparent self-direction

In the paper Emotion Understanding: Robots as Tools and Models by Lola Cañamero and Philippe Gaussier the role of emotions is discussed in a number of ways. Motivation is used as an example of a result of emotion in robotics as emotions are tied to differentiating between desirable and undesirable stimuli. A robot's ability to assign a value to an object or situation, it is faced with using emotions such as fear, disgust, and anger can be helpful when prioritizing tasks. In addition, emotional intelligence can help the agent to approach a task it has been working on for a prolonged amount of time in a new way. Frustration, the emotion an agent would feel when it has been doing an action repetitively with no desired result, would enable it to recognize its ineffectiveness and switch to another method. Furthermore, if the agent is interested in a novel object, it will engage with it in order to discover its relevance to its current