A classification of emotions study in software agent and robotics applications research

Abstract

Emotions play essential roles in rational thinking, decision making, learning and creativity. Over the years, research in software agent and robotics applications have gained positive momentum among researchers in various disciplines. Through their research, positive results indicate that significance role of emotions especially on cognitive processes have been reported. Nevertheless, not many work on classification of emotions study in software agents and robotic applications can be found. Hence, in our work, we are interested to classify and evaluate the work by reviewing the research paper in software agents and robotic applications. A total of 29 most relevant papers, retrieved from ISI Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library and Science Direct indexing databases, are critically reviewed. The review process includes manual search to preparing a classification checklist that comprises of title, description of method/framework, problem, advantages, limitations and future work. In addition, the reviewed papers are classified into three categories which are software agents in robotics application, intelligent tutoring system (ITS), and other areas. Moreover, the key challenges and research directions are also discussed. © 2015 IEEE.