"Artificial empathy of swarm" project group

The goal of the project is to determine how a swarm’s learning and adaptation speed is affected by the addition of empathic interaction modules.

The project aims to create a swarm of small robots that make decisions based on cognitive empathy under varying environmental conditions.

Artificial empathy is divided into emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is used to represent the state of other individuals, and determines the causality of actions. It makes it possible to predict the possible behavior of individuals and to plan responses to these behaviors. In an artificially empathic swarm, an individual determines the consequences that, given a set of available actions and the state of the environment, a particular internal state of the individual may carry. Based on the messages and observations of other individuals, the empathizing individual represents the state of the empathy targets. Then, based on its own experience (i.e. similarity to its own remembered and aggregated states and their possible consequences), the empathizing agent determines the success rates of the anticipated actions. In case where the interaction ensures a benefit, the individual takes an altruistic action. Otherwise, the agent acts egoistically. Decisions are made by each swarm member, as each has its own knowledge of its own internal states and subjective representations of the states of its neighbors. The swarm is not centrally controlled.

The above-described problem contains many areas for potential research: from knowledge representation, bot learning, and decision-making, to communication, control in a changing environment, and collision considerations.

Project members:

  • Joanna Siwek, PhD – Department of Artificial Intelligence, AMU
  • Patryk Żywica, PhD – Department of Artificial Intelligence, AMU
  • Tomasz Pajchrowski, PhD – Department of Industrial Control and Electronics, PUT
  • Przemysław Siwek, M.Sc. – Department of Industrial Control and Electronics, PUT
  • Adrian Wójcik, M.Sc. – Department of Industrial Control and Electronics, PUT

AMU students:

  • Agata Kulhawczuk, AMU
  • Maciej Czajka, AMU
  • Szymon Parafiński, AMU
  • Adrian Świtalski, AMU
  • Krystian Wasilewski, AMU