Buddy System: An Adaptive Mental State Support System Based on Active Inference and Free-Energy Principles

To support a healthy human mental state, controlling the environment is one of the best-known solutions. However, it is difficult to design an environmental control system because of the uniqueness of individual preferences and mental state fluctuations. Here, we propose “Buddy system” as an adaptive mental state support solution that controls devices in the environment, depending on the recognized user’s mental state at the time and how it could be improved, serving a role similar to a “buddy” to individuals. The recognition of mental states and the locus of actions to control one’s surrounding environment are implemented on the basis of a brain-derived theory of computation known as active inference and free-energy principles, which provide biologically plausible computations for perceptions and behavior in a changing world. For the generation of actions, we modify the general calculations of active inference to adjust to individual environmental preferences. In the experiments, the Buddy system sought to maintain the participants’ concentration while a calculation task was conducted. As a result, the task performance for most of the participants was improved through the aid of the Buddy system. The results indicated that the Buddy system can adaptively support to improve the mental states of individual users.