I attach something that could be interested to you, the original proposal of the project “Exploring the Role of Emotion in Propelling the SMET Learning Process”. The file was on http://affect.media.mit.edu/projectpages/lc/nsf1.html, (I hope that it still here).
Then, look at MIT, Media Lab, Affective Computing, link http://affect.media.mit.edu/index.php, Rosalind Picard, Barry Kort, and Rob Reilly…
Emotions could basically be understood as an inner context that get associated with the sensorimotor processes of an agent.
You can also view the emotions as tighly linked with a system of homeostatic drives and allostatic control (see attached paper).
To me the question that remains really unclear is which sensory-emotive associations are innate (e.g fear of spiders), and which one are acquired through experience (e.g joy to see a snow flake).
Conference Paper Modulating Behaviors Using Allostatic Control
To answr this question we need a definition of "emotion". The definition has to answer the occurrence, the results and last but not least the sense of emotions for the system.