Piet Hut and the QRIO

Piet Hut came to visit our lab for the second time. Dr. Fumihide Tanaka of Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories was also present. We discussed about Fumihide's experiment on robot-infant interaction going on in a San Diego nursery school. There are already some interesting aspects emerging from this ongoing research. Piet made some keen observations.
Shinichi Nozawa of Waseda University, and Nobuo Ishikawa of Tokyo Institute of Technology also participated in the discussion. They are most likely to join our lab starting next April.
After the serious talk, we continued our exchange of thoughts in a more relaxed environment of "Asari", a nice Izakaya in Gotanda area frequented by us. After some mugs of beer and glasses of sake, the border between robots and humans, or between sobriety and merriment, seemed to become even fuzzier.
After the merry but serious "symposium", Shinichi Nozawa and Takayasu Sekine walked Piet back to the hotel.


The Robot in question. Sony's Qrio