Constructive Approach for Interactive Robots and the Fundamental Issues

Deep learning has dramatically improved the performance of speech recognition and image recognition. However, this does not mean that human intelligence has been reproduced. Nevertheless, it is expected that research and development into robots with human-like intelligence, which interact like humans, and have social relationships and coexist with humans, will continue to develop quickly. 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.