I Feel Blue: Robots and Humans Sharing Color Representation for Emotional Cognitive Interaction

The paper presents a representation of colors integrated in a cognitive architecture inspired by the Psi model. In the architecture designed for a humanoid robot, the observation and recognition of humans and objects influence the emotional state of the robot. The representation of color is an additional feature that allows the robot to be “in tune” with the humans and share with them a physical space and interactions. This representation takes into account the current hypothesis about how the human brain allows sophisticated process and manage the colors, considering both universals and linguistic approaches. The paper describes in detail the problems of color representation, the potential of a cognitive architecture able to associate them with emotions, and how they can influence the interactions with the human.