From behaviour-based robots to motivation-based robots

The appearance on the market of entertainment robots for children and families has ipso facto created the new category of motivation-based robots. A taxonomy of the architectures of different robot categories is proposed. The architecture of motivation-based robots is phylogenetic and ontogenetic. A tentative architecture for a specific experimental setup is described. The results of the experiment show that a new motivation arises from the interaction between the robot and the environment. Motivation-based robots equipped with ontogenetic architecture might provide the foundation for a new generation of robots capable of ontogenetic development.