Logical Model and Verification of Emotion Triggers for BDI Agents

Triggering emotions in virtual multi-agents is widely believed to enhance medical user interactions. Researchers have investigated the use of logical methods to develop rigorous specifications for how emotions should be triggered in artificial agents. However, verifying whether an emotional model works as intended is challenging. This paper provides a logical formalization of event-based emotional triggering for multi-agent systems psychologically grounded on the cognitive theory of emotions proposed by Ortony, Clore, and Collins, and also addresses how symbolic model checking techniques can be applied to verify the properties of the emotional belief, desire, and intention (BDI) multi-agents model proposed herein by employing a modified version of the model checker for knowledge, belief, desire, and intention (MCKBDI). The results confirm that the modified MCKBDI can be applied to verify the emotion specifications of finite-state emotional multi-agent systems and that one can program agents capable of using and reasoning over emotions. This approach can be utilized to confirm that the computational model of emotion is formalized as intended.