Osaka University, Japan.
Hiroshi Ishiguro (石黒浩 Ishiguro Hiroshi) is director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Japan. A notable development of the laboratory is the Actroid, a humanoid robot with lifelike appearance and visible behaviour such as facial movements. In robot development, Ishiguro concentrates on the idea of making a robot that is as similar as possible to a live human being. At the unveiling in July 2005 of the gynoid Repliee Q1Expo (in the cybernetic world, the term for female android, gynoid, from ancient Greek "gyne", that is woman) he was quoted as saying, "I have developed many robots before, but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence. ... Repliee Q1Expo can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet." In his opinion, it may be possible to build an android that is indistinguishable from a human, at least during a brief encounter. Ishiguro has made an android that resembles him, called the Geminoid. The Geminoid was among the robots featured by James May in his 5 October 2008 BBC2 documentary on robots Man-Machine in May's series Big Ideas. He also introduced a telecommunication robot called the Telenoid R1. Hiroshi also uses the android to teach his classes at Osaka University of Japan and likes to scare his students by making Geminoid do human-like movements like blinking, "breathing" and fidgeting with his hands. Ishiguro has been listed, in 2011, as one of the 15 Asian Scientists to Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine. In 2018, Ishiguro was interviewed interacting with one of his robots for the documentary on artificial intelligence Do You Trust This Computer?.
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Abstract: The speaker has been working on the research and development of autonomous robots that interact with people in the JST ERATO Ishiguro Symbiotic Human Robot Interaction Project. The research approach involved is called the constructive method. This methodology reproduces complicated social phenomena, whose underlying principles are unknown, with robots in order to investigate the underlying mechanisms. By combining the various elements necessary for the realization of intelligent robots, we will develop a robot that behaves and interacts like a human. If this robot conveys human meta-level cognitive functions, such as intelligence, emotions, and consciousness through dialogue, the mechanisms of the robot will give us hints for clarifying the mechanisms underlying the meta-level cognitive functions. In this talk, the speaker will introduce research on autonomous conversational androids which have intentions and desires and integrate various implementable technologies, tele-operated androids, and social conversational robots, as examples of the constructive method. We will then discuss the potential of this method both for scientific research and practical application.
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A Perceptual Information Infrastructure monitors and recognizes real environment through sensor networks. The sensor network tracks people in real-time and recognizes human behaviors which provide rich information for understanding real world events and helps peoples and robots working in the real world. An Intelligent Robot Infrastructure is an interaction-based infrastructure. By interacting with robots, people can establish nonverbal communications with the artificial systems. That is, the purpose of a robot is to exist as a partner and to have valuable interactions with people. Our objective is to develop technologies for the new generation information infrastructures based on Computer Vision, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Introduction（PDF)
