Development of Speech Perception and Vocalization of Robots

One of the big issues of human cognitive development is language acquisition process, and constructive approaches have been attacking the issue to understand this process by building vocal robots. This talk gives a survey on these approaches. First, cognitive developmental robotics is briefly introduced to show a general idea of these approaches. Then, learning of vowel vocalization by parrot-like teaching is shown as one of the model of the interaction between an infant and a caregiver. Next, caregiver’s anticipation during the interaction process is analyzed, and as a result, it is shown how caregiver shapes the infant vowels. Finally, future issues are discussed towards language acquisition by cognitive developmental robotics.

Speaker Details

Minoru Asada received his B.E. (1977), M.E. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) in Control Engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.

From 1982 to 1988, Mr. Asada was a Research Associate of Control Engineering at Osaka University (Toyonaka, Japan). In April 1989, Mr. Asada became an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery at Osaka University (Suita, Japan). In April 1995, Mr. Asada became a full Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery at Osaka University. Since April 1997, Mr. Asada has been a Professor at the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University (Suita, Japan). Also, in 1986 and 1987, Mr. Asada was a visiting researcher at the Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland).

Professor Asada received the 1992 Best Paper Award of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS92). In 1995, Professor Asada’s was one of ten finalists for the 1995 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Best Conference Paper Award. In 1996, Professor Asada received the Best Paper Award of the Robotics Society of Japan. Professor Asada was elected to and served as General Chair of the IEEE/RSJ 1996 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS96). Since early 1990, Professor Asada has been involved in RoboCup activities and his team was the inaugural champion (shared with USC), in the mid- sized league of the first RoboCup competition held in conjunction with IJCAI-97 (Nagoya, Japan).

In 2001, Professor Asada received a Commendation by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan Government as Persons of Distinguished Services to Enlighten People on Science and Technology. In 2006, Professor Asada received the NISTEP Award from the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy. Since 2002, Professor Asada has served as President of the International RoboCup Federation. In 2005, Professor Asada was elected Fellow of the IEEE for Contributions to Robot Learning and Applications. Also in 2005, Professor Asada was elected to serve as Research Director of the ASADA Synergistic Intelligence Project of ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) by the Japan Science and Technology Agency and he continued to serve as Research Director until the Project was completed in 2012. In 2007, Professor Asada was awarded The Okawa Publications Prize (The Okawa Foundation) and, in 2008, he received The Good Designs Award (for VoCal – Vivid Oral Conversation through Acquiring Language (Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization) . In 2009, Professor Asada again received the Best Paper Award of the Robotics Society of Japan. And, in 2012, The Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) named Professor Asada to serve as Research Leader for the Specially Promoted Research Project (Tokusui) on Constructive Developmental Science Based on Understanding the Process From Neuro-Dynamics to Social Interaction.