biorobotics workshop cognitive developmental robotics (cdr ... · when the robot touches its own...

Minoru AsadaGraduate School of Engineering, Osaka UniversityJST ERATO Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project

13-15 December, 2010Multipurpose Hall, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Biorobotics Workshop

Cognitive Developmental Robotics (CDR):

What's CDR and how?

Outline of my talk1. Cognitive Developmental Robotics

1. Human development2. What’s cognitive developmental robotics?3. Fetus/neonate development simulation4. Vocal imitation

2. Is paradigm shift possible?1. Mirror Neuron System Connects Physical

Embodiment and Social Entrainment2. From self/other identification to self/other

separation

What’s going on in the womb (1)

Emergence of fetal movements and sense (Brain figures on the top are from Figure 22.5 in [Purves et al., 08], emergence of movements is from Figure 1 in [Vries et al., 84], and fetal senses are from [http://www.birthpsychology.com/lifebefore/fetalsense.html]

Infant development and learning targetsM / behaviors / learning targets--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 / hand regard / forward and inverse models of the hand

6 / finger the other’s face / integration of visuo-tactile sensation of the face

7 / drop objects and observe the result / causality and permanency of objects

8 / hit objects / dynamics model of objects9 / drum or bring a cup to mouth / tool use 10 / imitate movements / imitation of unseen movements11 / grasp and carry objects to others / action

recognition and generation, cooperation12 / pretend / mental simulation

External world(other agents, objects)

Dynamic interaction

icon

index

symbol

Set of constraints

Social interaction

Incrementalprocess

Self-organization・ DoF and motion・ self-exploration・ categorization・ sensori-motor integration

Facets of development

Based on [Lungarella_Metta_Pfeifer_Sandini03]

Neuromodulation, value, and synaptic plasticity





separation

What is Cognitive Developmental Robotics?

• Cognitive developmental robotics [1] (in short, CDR) aims at understanding human cognitive developmental process by synthetic or constructive approaches, and its core idea is "physical embodiment” that enables information structuring through interactions with the environment, including other agents.

[1] M. Asada et al., "Cognitive developmental robotics: a survey," IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 1(1):12–34, 2009.

Design issues of CDR• From a viewpoint of artifact design: １． What kinds of capabilities or structures should

be embedded? → the design of self-developing structures inside the robot's brain

２． How to set up the environment so that the robots embedded therein can gradually adapt themselves to more complex tasks in more dynamic situations? → the environmental design

３． What’s the temporal development structure? Discussion on the issues of underlying

neuromechanism and behavioral verification are needed. [Asada_et_al., 09]

Approaches of CDR A: construction of computational model of cognitive

development1) hypothesis generation: proposal of a computational

model or hypothesis based on knowledge from existing disciplines

2) computer simulation: simulation of the processes difficult to implement with real robots such as physical body growth

3) hypothesis verification with real agents (humans, animals, and robots), then go to 1)

B: offer new means or data to know human developmental process → mutual feedback with A

1) measurement of brain activity by imaging methods 2) verification using human subjects or animal ones3) providing the robot as a reliable reproduction tool in

(psychological) experiments

Amodio, D. M. and Frith, C. D. (2006) Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nat. Rev. Neurosci., 7, 268-277.

A view of social brain

Posterior region of the rostral MFC (prMFC) is involved in representing and continuously updating the value of possible future actions in order to regulate behavior.

prMFC

oMFCOrbital region of the MFC(oMFC) represents and updates the value of possible future outcomes.

arMFC

Anterior region of the rostral MFC(arMFC) comprise roughly three different categories: self-knowledge,person knowledge and mentalizing.

UnderstandingEmergence of Human intelligence

Design for symbiotichumanoids

SynergisticIntelligence

Physio-SIMotor emergence through Dynamic Interaction with

environment based on Artificial Muscles

Perso-SISynthetic understandingCognitive development

by Imitation Science

SI-mechanismVerification of Computational

Models by brain functional imagingand human/animal experiments

Socio-SIUnderstanding and

Realization of communication with

Androids

Koh Hosoda’sKoh Hosoda’sgroupgroup

Yasuo Yasuo Kuniyoshi’sKuniyoshi’s

groupgroupHiroshi Hiroshi

Ishiguro’sIshiguro’sgroupgroup

Toshio Inui’sToshio Inui’sgroupgroup

Synergistic Intelligence Project

Amodio, D. M. and Frith, C. D. (2006) Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nat. Rev. Neurosci., 7, 268-277.

SI-group structure

Physio-SI

Perso-SI

Socio-SISI-Mechanism

Towards the principle of cognitive development

• Rethinking "embodiment" or more correctly "Shintaisei ( 身体性 )" explained as event that the body specifies the interaction between active agent and environment, and its contents. That is also the infrastructure to form the cognition and behaviors by providing the structure to the interaction.

• Representation and architecture– Individual development: more neuroscientific

representation and more computational – Social development: opposite difficult to

formalize from case studies to formalization

object permanency　　 visuo-spatial rep.

allocentric co-system

rolling overcrawling

standing with support, 　 early walking

walking running jumping　

To intension understanding

whole body motion & assist

Dynamic Motion

holding during neonate & infant

highercognition

reflection

perceptionsensorymotor mapping

functional development

voluntarymotions

From emergence of social behavior through interactions with caregiver to development of communication

Vowel imitation Joint attention Responsive gazeSympathy development Future image: development of communication

ATR 知能ロボティクス研究所開発

body scheme & tool use

egocentric co-system

Fetus Simulation

Body representation &Spatial perception

Physio-Synergistic Intelligence

• From dynamic connection between body structure and environment with artificial muscles to understanding emergence of human intelligence– Antagonistic pair of pneumatic

actuators enables biped robots to walk on unstructured terrain and also to run and jump.

– Seamless transition between dynamic motions

[Hosoda G]

From motor development to cognitive one

[Prof. Koh Hosoda G]





separation

When the robot touches its own body….→ 　 Spatial and temporal integration of each sensory information

　　 Infants’ imitation 　＝　 AIM-model　　　

Organ Identification

（ A.N.Meltzoff and M.K.Moore 1977 ）

( Active Intermodal Matching Model )

Visual sense

Tactile sense

Proprioceptive sense

how do infants code the perceived and produced human acts within a common framework which enables infants to detect equivalences between the features of the different modality ??

Question?

Fetal Sensori-motor Development

[Kuniyoshi and Sangawa 06]Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Shinji Sangawa, Early Motor

Development from Partially Ordered Neural-Body Dynamics -- Experiments with A Cortico-Spinal-Musculo-Skeletal Model,

Biological Cybernetics, vol. 95, no. 6, pp. 589-605, Dec., 2006.

Fetal Brain Development (1)[Sangawa & Kuniyoshi 06]

Body and brain

Fetal Brain Development (2)[Kuniyoshi et al., 08]

see new video

Fetal Brain Development (5)[Kinjo & Kuniyoshi 09]

Visuo-Tactile Face Representation through Self-induced Motor Activity

[Fuke, Ogino, Asada 07]Fuke Sawa, Masaki Ogino, and Minoru Asada. Body image constructed from motor and tactle images with visual information. International Journal of Humanoid

Robotics, Vol.4, No.2, pp.347-364, 2007.

Simulation

Arrangement of the tactile units

Arm 　 : 　 5 degrees of freedom

Tactile units : 21×21Hand cells : 36

<The robot can detect…>1. Angles of its arm2. Position of the hands

in the camera image3. The ID of the nearest

cell of the hand？？

A neural network model for image formation of the face

through double-touch without visual information

[Song, Inui, Takemura 09]Wei Song, Toshio Inui, and Naohiro Takemura.

2nd International Conference on Cognitive Neurodynamics 2009(ICON'09), 2009.

tactile sensor

of finger

SI (finger)

shape coding withGabor filters

Hebbian connections

tactile sensor

of face

SI (face)

VIP

visual area

onion-like mapping

SOM with Gaussian-like local connections

SOM with Gaussian-like local connections

location pathw

ay

shape pathw

ay

Schematic diagram of the model

[Song, Inui, Takemura 09]

• When a part of a fetus’s face is touched by his/her hand, the tactile receptors on the facial skin are activated. Topological information about touched area on the face is transmitted to, and represented in, the VIP (ventral intraparietal area) via an onion-like map in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) (Moulton et al., 2009).

• Connections between SI and VIP as well as VIP and visual cortex are learned with the self-organizing map (SOM).

S1 map

finger areacorresponding

representation of onion-like map

Location pathway


• Concavo-convex information of the face within the finger surface is encoded by Gabor filters in SI according to the physiological findings (Bensmaia et al., 2008). There are sixteen kinds of filters with different orientation selectivity (see right fig.) The population of finger SI units codes shape information for each location within this filter bank.

Shape pathway


• After SOM, VIP units acquired facial somatotopic mapping (Fig. 5) similar to that seen in human fMRI data (Sereno and Huang, 2006).

• Right figure shows the acquired facial image in the visual cortex. This image appears when all the SI (finger) units are activated. it is a potential image formed by a number of finger tactile inputs. Retino-cortical mapping is well known as a log-polar transformation of the retinal image (e.g., Shwartz, 1977) Learning result

A

B

C q

Log(r+

1)

Results and Discussion


Issues:• Myowa and Takeshita (2006): mouth opening

reflection when fetuses (25w) hear their mothers’ voice.

• Oyabu (2008): Lip motion is exceptional while body motion and sensing function are compatible two months after the birth.

• Go and Konishi (2008): Neural infrastructure for neonatal imitation is under sub-cortical structure.

To what extent and how much innate?








Dynamic Motion


highercognition

reflection



voluntarymotions




Vowel imitation Joint attention

Fetus Simulation

Responsive gazeSympathy development Future image: development of communication







separation

Visual attention by saliency leads cross-modal body representation

[Hikita, Fuke, Ogino, Asada 07]Mai Hikita, Fuke Sawa, Masaki Ogino, and Minoru

Asada. IEEE 7th International Conference on Development and Learning, 2008.

Dynamic body representation (1)• Bimodal neuron ： body image extension by

tool use. [Iriki_et_al,96,01]

• Body scheme → unconscious, dynamic process of body control.

• Body image → conscious representation of self body.

• Interaction between external environment (vision) and body scheme.

[Stamenov, 2005]

Visual

Proprioceptive

Tactile

Dynamic body representation (2)

The activities of bimodal neurons change after training of tool-use.

The receptive field was extended to the tool.

Tool-use by the Japanese macaque [Iriki et al. 1996]

? How such representation is acquired ?

Before tool-use After tool-use

Dynamic body representation (3)Results: Experiment with a real robot

CB2 ( Minato et al. 2007)

With hand

With a tool

The connection weights

The activation of the integration map

Outline of my talk1. Robotics and RoboCup Initiative

1. What’s RoboCup?2. Video Clips

2. Cognitive Developmental Robotics1. Human development2. What’s cognitive developmental robotics?3. Fetus/neonate development simulation4. Physical interaction5. Vocal imitation

3. RoboCity CoRE








Dynamic Motion


highercognition

reflection



voluntarymotions




Vowel imitation Joint attention

Fetus Simulation

Responsive gazeSympathy development Future image: development of communication



Analysis of Physical Human- Robot Interaction for Motor Learning with Physical Help

Shuhei Ikemoto, Takashi Minato, and Hiroshi Ishiguro

2008 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2008

Background• Flexibility of robot joints

– simple control system– physical interaction

• How to evaluate physical interaction?– the result (success or failure)– subjectively good interaction

for human.

Which parameters lead subjectively good physical interaction

Procedure1. The human pulls up the robot’s hands.2. The Robot reacts and shrinks back.

Human assists robot uprising

3. The Robot kicks floor.

4. The human assists robot uprising

Human assists robot uprising

CB2 just switches own desired postures only twice.

• Time-window: approx. 1.5sec

• lag: -1.5 sec ～ 1.5sec

Cross-Correlation Value

time

post

ure

chan

ge n

orm

time

lag

Robot data are shifted

Human data are shifted

cross-correlationvalue

• Robot moves after human started moving

• The profiles of both norm data become similar each other

Movies

Expert Beginner (smooth)

Beginner (nonsmooth) Beginner (failed)

Successful ResultExpert Beginner (success)

An expert can start an interaction from more synchronized state because he can

predict robot’s motion

Failed ResultBeginner (nonsmooth)Beginner (failed)

An interaction successfully done needs continuous positive correlation,and the lag should be smaller

Results• An expert starts an interaction from more

synchronized states.• An expert is supposed to predict robot’s movements.

• An interaction successfully done needs continuous positive correlation, and the lag should be smaller.

• In failure interaction, that feature doesn’t appear in the correlation space.

Physical Interaction Learning: Behavior Adaptation in Cooperative Human-Robot Tasks Involving Physical Contact [IEEE RO-MAN 2009, 2009]

Physical human-robot interaction(1)• We are focusing on physical human-robot

interaction• In human-human interaction, there are

several kinds of physical interaction– Physical interaction between a mother and a baby– The baby can stand up despite she still cannot

stand up by herself

Physical human-robot interaction(2)• Main technical difficulties in this challenge

are:– How to ensure that safety is always guaranteed– How to assure that the robot reacts appropriately

to the force applied by the human instructor– How to improve the robot’s behavior using a

machine learning algorithm in the PHRI

Flexible jointsare necessary!

Learning to switch target pauses

• Robot motions and changes cause human’s motions and changes. Vice versa?

PHRImodulation

DB s1

s2

Switching rule

:Posture spacesuccess

• In order to refine the robot’s motion, improving the human’s motion is required– The purpose is

to improve not only the robot’s motion but also the human’s motion, in other words, to improve the interaction

Human-in-the-loop Approach (1)

The human bears a part of the learning system as a critic of the interaction

The human bears a part of the dynamics as an actor of the interaction

Human-in-the-loop Approach (2)Which is the target pause during motions

1

2

Colors change when the targetpauses change

These trajectories can be realizedwith human’s physical assistance

・・・

52D Pause Space

Reduction by PCA

52 → 2

Gaussian Mixture Model:

where

EMAlgorithm

Results (1)

Beforelearning

Beforelearning

Afterlearning

Afterlearning

Results (2)

Mapping from Facial Expression to Internal State based on Intuitive Parenting

[Watanabe, Ogino, Asada 07]Ayako Watanabe, Masaki Ogino, and Minoru Asada. Mapping Facial Expression to Internal States Based on Intuitive Parenting. Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.19, No.3, pp.315--323, 2007

Introduction (I)

• Future robots entering into our daily life are expected to be endowed with the ability of sympathy.

• Understanding the developing process to acquire the sympathetic ability is one of the interesting mysteries in developmental psychology.– imitation during motor babbling [Breazeal

et al., 2005] ?

• Parents often mimic and emphasize their facial expression of certain emotional stated presumed from their children’s facial expression

[ Papousek and Papousek. 1987 ]

Intuitive Parenting

Introduction (II)

• Intuitive parenting is thought to help children to develop their sympathetic ability [Gergely and Watson, 1999]

Visual space for face

relation

stimulus

Internal state

• Modeling a developmental process of sympathy through intuitive parenting

Introduction (III)

System Overview

Internal state (I)• The internal state of the robot consists of two

kinds of variables, arousal-sleep axis and pleasure-displeasure axis.

[Russel1980 ]Arousal

Sleep

Displeasure

Surprise Elated

Happy

Content

Sleepy

Afraid

Sad

FrustratedExcitementStress

Depression Calm

BoredRelaxed

NaturalPleasure

Facial expression• The robot changes its facial expression according

to the internal state, S.• Two structural variables “curving and releasing”

and “inclination” are related to the internal state. [Yamada, 1993]

Learning (I)• Facial expression of the caregiver is

categorized by self organizing map (SOM)• Mapping between face SOM and internal state

is learned by Hebbian.

)(Vfij

Internal space)(Sklg

Face SOM

€

∆wijkl =αfij(V)gkl(S)

€

f i j ( V ) = e − ν | V − V i j | 2

g k l ( S ) = e − ρ | S − S k l | 2

Experimental Setup

Keyboard (touch sensor)

Microphone (sound)

CameraDisplay

Learning experiment

Human facial expression SOM of humanfacial expression

Robot facialexpression

p

a

Internal state space

４： human facial expressioncorresponding to robot state

and expression

３： facial expression ２： change of internal stateby the external stimulas

１： External stimulas Hebbian Learninfg

Experimental result• The result of mapping between caregiver’s

facial expression and self internal state• The caregiver’s

faces are associated with the internal state, and the distribution is almost same as the Russel’s two dimensional emotional model.

Experimental result Sympathetic communication after learning

• Sympathetic facial expression is possible by introducing the effect of the correspondence of internal state and other’s facial expression.

Discussion (1)• In brain, which region is responsible for

sympathy? [Singer et al. 2004]• Using fMRI, brain activity while volunteers

experienced a painful stimulus and compared it to that elicited when they observed a signal indicating that their loved one. Bilateral anterior insula (AI), rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), brainstem, and

cerebellum were activated when subjects received pain and also by a signal that a loved one experienced pain.

Discussion (2)1. The pain area is stimulated first using self-

sensor input. 2. Another sensor input of a different modality

(e.g. visual information from a caregiver) is partly projected on to the same area.

3. Intuitive parenting strengthens the connection between the subject’s feeling based on the pain sensation of self and the feeling toward that of others based on visual information.

4. Sensor input from different modalities suppress each other, finally forming a sympathetic region.

Discussion (3)• It seems that the emotional state of self and

others are represented in the different area of the same region. What switches self and others?

Vowel Acquisition by Maternal Imitation

[Yoshikawa et al., 03] etc.Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Minoru Asada, Koh Hosoda, and Junpei Koga. A Constructivist approach to

infants' vowel acquisition through mother-infant interaction. Connection Science, Vol.15, No.4,

pp.245--258, 2003.

Introduction• Vowel Imitation between Agents with Different

Articulation Parameters by Parrot-like Teaching

– Infants seem to acquire (imitate) phonemes:• without any explicit knowledge about the

relationship between their sensorimotor system and phonemes, and

• without a capability to reproduce the adult’s sound as they are.

• How can robots do that?

2007.08.27

Human Vocalization [Deacon 98]• Vocalization the

interaction of the oral and respiratory tracts special association with midbrain systems.

• To organize vocalization coordinated activation of the cluster of motor neurons that control the muscle of breathing, the tension of the larynx, and the movement of the oral and facial muscles. the motor neurons controlling all of these are located in the upper brain stem.

Human Vocalization [Deacon 98]• Two evolutionary shifts producing increasing

cortical control over motor output from brain stem articulatory and vocal systems. These shifts were produced by an increase in the proportions of the cerebral cortex in comparison to these brain stem structures.

Cortex-brain stem projection

HumanPrimateNon-primate

A constructivist approach• The purpose To build a robot that

acquires the vowels of a human caregiver • Design issues:

–What kind of mechanism should be embedded?

–What should be the behavior of the caregiver?

Caregiver’s behavior?

Robot’s mechanism?

Observations in human infants

• Infant’s speech-like cooing tends to make its mother utter [Masataka and Bloom’94].

• Maternal imitation of infant's cooing (i.e., parrot-like vocalization) increases vocalization rates of a three-month-infant [Pelaez-Noqueras ’96] .

infant cooing maternal imitation

Conjectures It reinforces infants’ speech-like cooing. It helps to find the correspondence between cooing and phonemes.

The robotOutput sound Sound

source

Silicon tube

deformingArticulation vector

PC

5 Motors

Formant vector

Formant extractorMicrophone F1

F2 F3 F4…..

Frequency [Hz]

Formant distribution of Japanese average female

• Resonant frequency changes depending on the shape of vocal tract.

• Vocal feature for vowel discrimination.

• Non-human primates and birds utilize as perceptual cues [Fitch 2000]

What’s Formant Space?

A model of interaction

Randomarticulator

Parrot-like teaching

Learningmodule

motors

microphone

The robotThe caregiverRandomly cooing

Auditory layer

Articulation layer

auditory layer

Learning mechanism

• Clustering the articulation parameters and the formant vectors by the SOM algorithm.

• Connections are updated based on Hebbian learning.

random articulator

SOM

Parrot-like teaching

Formant vector

input

Formant extractor

articulation layer

SOM

Hebbian learning

trigering

Articulationvector

cooing

Acquired vowels• The acquired vowels can be interpreted as

Japanese vowels.

/a/, /i/,/

u/, /e/

Result: how it acquire vowels?

The articulation vectors corresponding to the variation of the caregiver’s vowels

PC 1

PC 2

/a/

/i//e/

/u/

• The vowel /o/ is not acquired due to the difference in shape of vocal tracts.

• There is “arbitrariness” in correspondence.

Introducing subjective criteria

• A “subjective” criterion: more facile articulation is better.– less torque ( )– less deformation change ( )

Articulation layer

Auditory layer

mj

fiij aaw ∝∆

mj

fiidctrqij aaccw ),(η∝∆

trqc

idcc

Basic Hebbian rule

Modified Hebbian rule

Result: effect of subjective criteria

Comparing the distribution of the articulation vectors corresponding to the variation of the caregiver’s vowels

PC 1PC

2

/a/

/i/

/e/

/u/

Subjective criteria can reduce arbitrariness.

PC 1

PC 2

/a/

/i/

/e/

/u/

Basic Hebbian rule Subjective criteria

Lip shape imitation

[Miura et al, 2006]

Visual imitation , too!

Caregiver’s Auto-mirroring and Infant’s Articulatory Development Enable Vowel Sharing

Hisashi Ishihara*, Yuichiro Yoshikawa**, and Minoru Asada**,** Grad. Sch. of Eng., Osaka University, Japan** Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, ERATO, JST [ICDL08,EpiRob09]

i eau

oi e

auo

Infant’s Vowel Development• Sharing process of perceptual & behavioral primitives

between a caregiver and her infant across their different bodies– Physical quantities of their producible vowels are

different [Vorperian & Kent.’07]

– Infants’ audition [Polka & Werker.’94] & articulation [Kuhl & Meltzoff.’96] adapt to mother-tongue (become native)

• Dynamic process including intrapersonal interaction & social interaction [Kuhl et al.’08]

Social engagementof caregiver Perceptual

development

Articulatorydevelopment

Caregiver’s Sensorimotor Magnets Lead Infant’s Vowel Acquisition through Auto Mirroring

• A method that aids unconscious guidance in mutual imitation for infant development based on a biasing element with two different kinds of modules.

1.The normal magnet effect in perceiving heard vocal sounds as the listener’s own vowels (perceptual magnet) and also includes another magnet effect for imitating vocal sounds that resemble the imitator’s vowels (articulatory magnet).

2.What we call “auto mirroring bias,” by which the heard vowel is much closer to the expected vowel because the other’s utterance is an imitation of the listener’s own utterance.

[Ishihara et al, 2008]

Caregiver’s Sensorimotor Magnets Lead Infant’s Vowel Acquisition through Auto MirroringHow humans imitate the sound?

Synthesi zedVoi ces Imitated

Voices

/a/

/i //u/

/e/

/o/2nd F

orma

nt [

mel]

1st Formant [mel ]

i mi tati on


Psychological experiment for auto-mirroring bias

Cnt. G Exp. G

Voice-Feature Space

Voice-Feature Space

Imi (Cnt) < Imi (Exp)

Auto-Mirroringbias

HypothesisImi (Cnt)

Imi (Exr)

[Wakasa et al., unpublished]

p-value ０．０３６０．０１４０．４５４

Cnt. G

Exp. G# of Data

15

11

15

14

14

14

Significant difference

Auto-mirroring bias exists!

No significant differenceConcentrationlevel down

3rd set2nd set1st set

Voice Feature D

ifference

　

[Hz]

※significant level 　５％

Psychological experiment for auto-mirroring bias

Cnt. Exp.

[Wakasa et al., unpublished]

Caregiver’s Sensorimotor Magnets Lead Infant’s Vowel Acquisition through Auto Mirroring


Remarks• Our model reproduced some phenomena in vowel

sharing process of infants– Rapid separation of infant vowel clusters– Motherese– Gradual acquisition of native vowels

• Caregiver’s affirmative biases guided infant vowels to be native through mutual imitation

• Infant articulatory immaturity (noise) contributed vowel cluster separation and enables acquiring native vowels

• Stretching motherese, exaggerating vocalizations, might caused by caregiver’s underestimation of infant vocalizations





separation

Our goal is ….• To build a model of human’s cognitive

development processes.• One promising approach is “Cognitive

Developmental Robotics” that aims at not simply filling the gap between brain science and developmental psychology but more challengingly at building a new paradigm that provides new understanding of ourselves and at the same time new design theory of humanoids symbiotic with us.

• But, not yet!

Is a paradigm shift possible? (1)• Analysis based approach from a God’s

viewpoint faces with twofold difficulties when it focus on humans as living things.

1.Biology more and more microscopic views with various kinds of levels and representations such as those in cell biology or molecular biology.

2.Understanding human beings as social agentshard or insufficient under a single scientific paradigm, therefore

Interdisciplinary approach seems essential.

Is a paradigm shift possible? (2)• What is a sufficient condition? • Is it impossible by integrating the existing scientific

disciplines? • Is CDR completely independent from them? • Of course not! By involving them, CDR should give its

significance by prospecting the limits of the existing scientific disciplines.

• In this context, the issue to be attacked is “interaction” between neurons or brain regions or individual persons.

• Communication, a kind of interaction between subjective agents may involve the language development in the level of the individual persons, and therefore seems difficult to formalize the interaction.

Is a paradigm shift possible? (3)• To summarize the CDR approach,1)integrate the knowledge, evidences, and findings

(utilize the existing paradigms and synthesize them), not to deny the existing disciplines but to involve them. Therefore, CDR researchers should have the minimum amount of knowledge in these disciplines

2) build a model or a hypothesis that have no contradiction with the existing disciplines or resolve the contradiction or controversial issues, a key point for the CDR researchers to hit on an idea that reflects the integrated knowledge in 1) and,

3) Find a new factor that provides a solution to mystery through the verification process of the model or the hypothesis by simulations or real experiments.

Is a paradigm shift possible? (4)• The common issues are body representation, rhythm

and timing, multimodal input/output (vision, auditory, touch, somatosensory, motion, vocalization etc.), self-other separation, sociality acquisition, and so on.

• If CDR can provide the constructive and unified form of the representation that can explain and simultaneously design the cognitive development of these issues, instead of representing them separately, this may lead to the creation of a new value of the paradigm shift.

• To enable this, the studies of developmental disorders in addition to the studies of normal children may help the unified model construction of cognitive development.





separation

Acknowledgement• Group Leaders and Research Contributors :

– Prof. Koh Hosoda (Osaka Univ.)– Prof. Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Univ. of Tokyo)– Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka Univ.)– Prof. Toshio Inui (Kyoto Univ.)– Dr. Masaki Ogino (Osaka Univ., body image)– Dr. Yuichiro Yoshikawa (JST ERATO, vowel imitation)– Ph.D student Hisashi Ishihara (Vowel imitation, Affetto)

Thank you for your attention!Please come to Osaka! Everything robotics and cognition is there!

biorobotics workshop cognitive developmental robotics (cdr ... · when the robot touches its own...

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