Comparative Analytical Survey on Cognitive Agents with Emotional Intelligence

During the past decade, social interaction in computer systems has attracted wide attention from the human-computer interaction and robotics communities. One of the essential objectives of artificial intelligence and human-machine interaction is to develop cognitive agents that can interact with others naturally in social situations. Emotional intelligence has a fundamental role in social communication. Emotional intelligence is the capacity of human beings to precisely assess their emotional states as well as emotions pertinent to others and subsequently utilize the acquired information to manage and conduct thoughts and actions and regulate their emotions for adaptation to environments. This critical role of emotional intelligence in social contexts fuels interest in developing computational models of emotions. Therefore, computational models of emotions enhance the behaviors associated with cognitive agents. The main objective of this paper is to present a more holistic view of cognitive agents with emotional intelligence for providing a confident route to the researchers in this literature. This paper offers a comprehensive study of all aspects of emotionally cognitive agents, including definitions, features, applications, and challenges. Subsequently, state-of-the-art computational models of emotions in affective computing literature utilized in cognitive agents are investigated. Also, the general framework is proposed for emotion modeling in cognitive agents. The proposed general framework leverages four main components: emotion generation, emotion experience, emotion regulation, and emotional modulation. These components occur intertwined within an emotional episode. Given our proposed framework, we investigate the components implemented in each computational model of emotions. Due to challenges in assessing agents with emotional intelligence, we present a classification of the evaluation manners leveraged in various studies. Then, we categorize and discuss challenges that necessitate being addressed for further studies. The main contribution of the paper is to provide insight and extensive resources for researchers on the cognitive agents with emotional intelligence literature.