Infanoid

Abstract

We are building an infant-like 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 ontogenetic model of social intelligence, which is being implemented in Infanoid: how the robot acquires communicative behavior through interaction with the social environment, especially with human caregivers. The model has three stages: (1) the acquisition of intentionality, which enables the robot to make use of certain methods for obtaining goals, (2) identification with others, which enables it to indirectly experience others' behavior, and (3) social communication, in which the robot understands others' behavior by ascribing it the intention that best explains the behavior.