IROS2010 Workshop on

Socio-synergistic intelligence:

Learning with Caregivers

Taipei, Taiwan, October 22th, 2010

 

 

The challenge of making a robot learn from human user/caregiver shares essential problems with other research fields on infant development. Both of them involve issues of not only learning motor/social skills but also simultaneous and long-lasting mutual adaptation between the learner and the caregiver. A promising approach is a synthetic one based on both the explanation theory and more importantly the design theory that is expected to fill in the gap between the existing disciplines instead of staying at one closed discipline, and to provide new understanding of human cognitive development. However, many of existing synthetic studies have still ignored the caregiver’s side, and therefore, limited to the computer simulation.

This full day workshop is intended to bridge the researchers who want to synthesize the bidirectional processed of tutoring and learning in the real world and those who develops hardware that enables such a bidirectional process in human-robot interaction, and thereon explore new research direction.

 

List of invited speakers & titles of the talk (and tentative time schedule)

 

8:45-9:00

Introduction

 

9:00-10:00

Chen Yu

Indiana University

“Sensorimotor Dynamics in Multimodal Child-Parent and Human-Robot Interactions”

 

10:00-10:20

Coffee break

 

10:20-10:50

Minoru Asada

Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University

Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, ERATO, JST

  Mirror Neuron System Connects Physical Embodiment and Social Entrainment

 

  10:50-11:30

Takashi Hashimoto

School of Knowledge Science, JAIST

Constructive simulation for sociointelligenesis

 

  11:30-12:00

Yuichiro Yoshikawa

Dept. of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University

Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, JST

Synthesizing Social Development with Small Desktop Humanoids

 

12:00-13:40

Lunch break

 

13:40-14:10

Tetsuya Ogata

Dept. of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University,
RESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency

“Mutual adaptive interaction between robots and human based on the dynamical systems approach”

 

 14:10-14:40

Yasser F. O. Mohammad

  Faculty of Engineering, Assiut University, Egypt

“Learning to Interact with the Caregiver: from Interaction Design to Interaction Protocol Learning”

 

14:40-15:10

Hidenobu Sumioka

  Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

 Cognitive development induced by sensorimotor contingency

 

15:10-15:40

Coffee break

 

15:40-16:10

Takashi Minato

Asada Project, ERATO, JST

“Development of Humanoid Platforms for Studying Social Development”

 

 

Important Dates

Jul. 15, 2010 (extended): Submission deadline for extended abstract

Jul. 20, 2010 (extended): Notification of acceptance

Jul. 25, 2010: Camera ready deadline

Oct. 22, 2010: Workshop

 

 

Submissions

Anyone who is interested in presenting contribution in this WS is invited to submit an extended abstract using IEEE format. The page limit for the final paper is 6 pages. Submission must be in PDF file format to yoshikawa@jeap.org

 

 

Motivation and objectives

Learning from human users or caregivers is one of the key requirements for autonomous artificial system that can adapt to human society. It is also one of the greatest features of human beings to develop motor/social capabilities. Both of them involve issues of not only learning motor/social skills/knowledge but also simultaneous and long-lasting mutual adaptation between the learner and the caregiver. Therefore, related disciplines are not simply robotics and AI but also brain science, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and so on, and we share this challenge. An obvious fact is that we have too poor and little knowledge and too superficial implementations based on such knowledge to declare that we have only one unique solution to the mystery.

The first step to conquer this situation is to discuss how such bidirectional and transitive processes can be synthesized. A promising approach is a synthetic one based on both the explanation theory and more importantly the design theory that is expected to fill in the gap between the existing disciplines instead of staying at one closed discipline, and to provide new understanding of human cognitive development. However, many of existing synthetic studies have still ignored the behavior of caregivers, and therefore stayed at the computer simulation.

In this workshop, we revisit the synthetic approach (ex. Asada et al. 2009, IEEE Transaction on Autonomous Mental Development) that provides a new approach to understand how human infants could learn from their caregivers, and expands discussion toward the principle of learning with caregivers. However, the approach to understand the aspects of mutual adaptation in human interactions by faithfully synthesizing seems to involve methodological difficulties. Because, one’s behavior is unconsciously influenced by subtle differences such as how one feels the other, which would prevent us to simplify the interaction to be modeled. Furthermore, target phenomena to be synthesized have not yet been clearly figured out since the results of mutual adaptation might appear in long history of interactions. Here, we argue that introducing robots or onscreen agent into human communication would be another synthetic approach for understanding human mutual adaptation because creating social applications give us targets to be modeled and has social contributions as it is. For such a new direction, to bridge existing synthetic research to the real world, the researchers who develop platform that can be potentially applied to model/solve the mutual adaptation in human interaction will be also invited. Finally, general discussion towards the new research direction of learning from caregiver will be held.

 

List of topics

Infant/child robot, Synthetic approach, Infant development, Human-robot interaction, Physical interaction, Social learning, Human-in-loop learning, Teaching by demonstration, Learning by imitation, Teaching by touching, Social behavior, Caregiver, Motherise/motionese, Parental behavior, Motor development, Social development, Long term adaptation, Reading intention, and Theory of mind

 

 

Intended audience

Any researchers who are interested in this topic, especially who wants to extend their synthetic work in the computer simulation to the real world, and/or who wants to explore new research direction in the intersection between robotics and human science

 

 

Organizers

Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Osaka University / Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, JST, yoshikawa@jeap.org

Takashi Minato, Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, JST

Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University / Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project, JST / ATR

 

Contact Info

Please contact to Yuichiro Yoshikawa (yoshikawa@sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp) if you have any questions.