Breakthrough in Robotics : A child robot that learns from its environment

Professor Minoru Asada from emergent robotics laboratory at Osaka University has made a major breakthrough in Robotics. His team has developed a new child robot named Affetto. The unique thing about Affetto is that the face of the child robot has been created such that it resembles and emotes like a child. This makes the interaction with humans more natural. This is an ongoing project for simulating infant cognitive development in which Professor Minoru is assisted by Hisashi Ishihara and Yuichiro Yoshikawa.

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The purpose of Affetto is to study the early stage of human social development. The child robot is modeled after a one to two-year-old child. Earlier attempts in this area have met with limited success due to limited realistic child appearance and facial expressions which has hindered human-robot interaction thus far. Affetto is different as it adds a whole new element of facial expressions to the child robot making the interaction with humans more close to a normal human interaction.

Take a look at some of the expressions that Affetto can make to share its emotions with a human.

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Ideally the mechanics and electronic aspects which make this possible should not be revealed to the humans to ensure that the interaction is a closer to life experience for human beings as well as the child robot. This will aid in the understanding the development of human interaction in its early stages.

This research is part of the ongoing effort under the JST ERATO Asada Project aimed at "cognitive developmental robotics," which aims to understand the development of human intelligence through the use of robots. The team behind has also presented a research paper detailing the development of Affetto at the 28th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan in 2010.

This Project is expected to help people recognize the importance of a constructive model and introduce more macroscopic views into the conventional studies of brain science and physiology, which tend to be microscopic for further development in various fields related to the brain. In addition, the idea is expected to lead to understanding by humans conducting high-grade social activities, and to the solutions of various problems regarding the psychological development and education of children.

More about Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project

Via: Spectrum IEEE