Application of emotion affected associative memory based on mood congruency effects for a humanoid

Emotional factor plays an important role in communication. In the field of psychology, it is known that memory and emotions are closely related to each other. In this paper, we present the significance of emotional factors to associative memory in communication and apply it on human–robot interaction problems. Emotional models for the robot partner are developed, and an interactive robot system with a complex-valued multi-directional associative memory model is proposed. We utilize multi-modal information such as object, gesture, voice, and facial expressions to associate the relationships in associative memory, and generate the emotional information for the robot partner. As a result, the robot partner is able to perform various actions depending on the emotional factors. Results from the interactive experiments indicate possibility of suitable information for communication space being provided from the robot partner.