The picture above shows CB^2 and the video shows my interaction with CB^2 (Child Robot with Biomimetic Body) created under direction of Dr.Minoru Asada, Professor department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University, Osaka,Japan. The JST ERATO project lead by Dr. Minoru Asada and Dr.Hiroshi Ishiguro investigates Synergistic Intelligence (hereafter, SI)” which merges intelligent behaviors through the interaction with environment including humans. Synergistic effects with brain science, neuroscience, cognitive science, and developmental psychology are expected. SI is one approach to a new discipline called “Cognitive Developmental Robotics” that aims at providing a new way of understanding ourselves and a new design theory of humanoids through mutual feedback between the design of human-like robots and human-related science. This project consists of four groups: (1) Physio-SI: dynamic motions such as walking, running, jumping, and heading and their seamless connections based on pneumatic muscle actuators, (2) Perso-SI: cognitive developmental robotics including body image, imitation, and language communication, (3) Socio-SI: emergence of communication and society by androids, and (4)SI-mechanism: neuroscientific supports for Physio, Perso, and Socio-SIs. Professor Rodney Brooks at MIT described a metric that might be used to determine when a robot can be considered alive. He said that a robot might be considered alive if his students felt bad about turning it off. By that criteria, scientists from Japan’s Osaka University are on the brink of making an artificial life form. CB2, a child robot with biomimetic body for cognitive developmental robotics [1] developed by the Socially-Synergistic Intelligence
(Hereafter, Socio-SI) group of JST ERATO Asada Project. The Socio-SI group has focused on the design principles of communicative and intelligent machines and human social development
through building a humanoid robot that has physical and perceptual structures close to us, that enables safe and close interactions with humans. For this purpose, CB2 was designed, especially in order to establish and maintain a long-term social interaction between human and robot. The most significant features of CB2 are a whole-body soft skin (silicon surface with many tactile
sensors underneath) and flexible joints (51 pneumatic actuators). These studies at Osaka University associate elucidation of the mechanism of human development. CB2 enables long-term and tight interaction with people, and, therefore, it can be a research platform to study a developmental mechanism in which various factors are combined in a complicated way. It contributes not only to a development of communicative and intelligent robots but also to understanding the development of human intelligence.
REFERENCE: CB^2 : A Child Robot with Biomimetic Body for Cognitive Developmental Robotics, T Takashi, Y Yoshikawa, T Noda, S Ikemoto, H Ishiguro, M Asada, Asada Project-ERATO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-0ka,Suita, Osaka 565-0871,Japan
