1. Field
The following description relates to affective components that can be applied to robots, virtual characters, and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, interests in robots that can imitate human behaviors are increasing. Such robots, termed “emotional robots” have been developed to exhibit specific emotions in response to external stimuli and make specific expressions or motions related to the emotions. For achieving this function, an emotional robot is generally programmed to have affective components.
Such affective components are composed of fixed, unchangeable personality characteristics and emotions which change according to external stimuli. For example, the emotions may change depending on sensor inputs and perceptual features.
A person's personality tends to change through education or by environmental factors. That is, a person's personality is learned under various conditions. Through such personality learning, a person develops abilities involving interacting with other people more tactfully and being more adaptive to surrounding environments and situations.
However, since affective components that have been applied to emotional robots, etc. are based on fixed, unchangeable personality characteristics, an emotional robot having such affective components tend to show unnatural, simple reactions in a practical situation even though it has been designed to exhibit behavior patterns very similar to human beings.