A Robot that Learns to Communicate with Human Caregivers

Abstract

We are developing an infant-like humanoid robot, Infanoid , to investigate the underlying mechanisms of social intelligence that will allow it to communicate with human beings and participate in human social activities. We propose an epigenetic model of social intelligence — how the robot acquires communicative behavior through interaction with its social environment, especially with human caregivers. The model has three stages: (1) the acquisition of intentionality, which enables the robot to intentionally use certain methods for obtaining goals, (2) identification with others, which enables it to indirectly experience other people’s behavior, and (3) social communication, in which the robot empathetically understands other people’s behavior by ascribing to the intention that best explains the behavior.