Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro Professor of Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University Visiting group leader of ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories. Android Science -From Human likeness to Humanlike presence ?
Abstract The challenge of android development was ?human likeness.? We have developed androids that have humanlike appearance and behaviors. However, the bottleneck was the AI. It is not possible to develop androids that can have long conversations with people. Our solution is to implement a function of tele-operated. The newly developed android is called Geminoid. The Geminoid is a tele-opereated android of an existing person. The person can talk with people who are in a distant place by using the geminoid. The most interesting phenomenon in this system is that the person operating the geminoid and the people talking with the geminod can quickly adapt to the system by talking each other and forget to be talking through the geminoid. This talk will discuss these issues and a new framework of Android Science. Android Science aims to understand human by building androids. Bio: He received D.Eng. degree from Osaka University in 1991. In 1991, he started working as a research assistant of Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Yamanashi University. Then, he moved to Department of Systems Engineering, Osaka University, Japan, as a research assistant in 1992. In 1994, he was an associate professor of Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, Japan, and started research of distributed vision using omnidirectional cameras. From 1998 to 1999, he worked in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, San Diego, as a visiting scholar. From 1999, he is a visiting researcher in ATR Media Information Science Laboratories and he has developed interactive humanoid robots, Robovie. In 2000, he moved to Department of Computer and Communication Sciences, Wakayama University, as an associate professor and then he became a professor in 2001. Now he is a professor of Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University, and a group leader of ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication laboratories. His current interests are interactive robots, android robots and perceptual information infrastructure.