Android robots shown at the Osaka Expo in a pavilion produced by University of Osaka professor Hiroshi Ishiguro will be relocated to Kyoto Prefecture. OSAKA - Seven android robots shown at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka in a pavilion produced by University of Osaka professor Hiroshi Ishiguro will be relocated to Kyoto Prefecture after the end of the event on Monday. In addition, the Dutch pavilion will be moved to Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture. People involved in the use of expo assets after the event hope that they will be loved as tourist attractions in their new places. The prefectural government of Kyoto was chosen as the new owner of the androids in an open tender held by the expo organizer, the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition, in September. The robots will be shown to the public at a research facility in the Keihanna Science City research district straddling the Kyoto municipalities of Seika and Kizugawa.

OSAKA - Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako on Monday visited the World Expo in the city of Osaka for the second time. At the Future of Life pavilion, which envisions a society 50 years from now, the Imperial couple viewed exhibits featuring androids and robots. The emperor showed his fascination at an android modeled after Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), saying that the Japanese novelist continues to live on. The emperor and the empress commented that the androids looked very human, according to Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at the University of Osaka, who guided the couple. At the U.N. Pavilion, run by the United Nations, the Imperial couple watched a video introducing the world body with solemn expressions.

Group processes refer to the dynamics that occur within a group and are critical for understanding how groups function. With robots being increasingly placed within small groups, improving these processes has emerged as an important application of social robotics. Social Mediation Robots elicit behavioral change within groups by deliberately influencing the processes of groups. While research in this field has demonstrated that robots can effectively affect interpersonal dynamics, there is a notable gap in integrating these insights to develop coherent understanding and theory. We present a scoping review of literature targeting changes in social interactions between multiple humans through intentional action from robotic agents. To guide our review, we adapt the classical Input-Process-Output (I-P-O) models that we call "Mediation I-P-O model". We evaluated 1633 publications, which yielded 89 distinct social mediation concepts. We construct 11 mediation approaches robots can use to shape processes in small groups and teams. This work strives to produce generalizable insights and evaluate the extent to which the potential of social mediation through robots has been realized thus far. We hope that the proposed framework encourages a holistic approach to the study of social mediation and provides a foundation to standardize future reporting in the domain.

Robots in our daily surroundings are increasing day by day. Their usability and acceptability largely depend on their explicit and implicit interaction capability with fellow human beings. As a result, social behavior is one of the most sought-after qualities that a robot can possess. However, there is no specific aspect and/or feature that defines socially acceptable behavior and it largely depends on the situation, application, and society. In this article, we investigate one such social behavior for collocated robots. Imagine a group of people is interacting with each other and we want to join the group. We as human beings do it in a socially acceptable manner, i.e., within the group, we do position ourselves in such a way that we can participate in the group activity without disturbing/obstructing anybody. To possess such a quality, first, a robot needs to determine the formation of the group and then determine a position for itself, which we humans do implicitly. The theory of f-formation can be utilized for this purpose. As the types of formations can be very diverse, detecting the social groups is not a trivial task. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey of the existing work on social interaction and group detection using f-formation for robotics and other applications. We also put forward a novel holistic survey framework combining all the possible concerns and modules relevant to this problem. We define taxonomies based on methods, camera views, datasets, detection capabilities and scale, evaluation approaches, and application areas. We discuss certain open challenges and limitations in current literature along with possible future research directions based on this framework. In particular, we discuss the existing methods/techniques and their relative merits and demerits, applications, and provide a set of unsolved but relevant problems in this domain.

We have often seen Sci-Fi movies powered by computer-simulated reality bring a dystopian future alive to reel life. In a step ahead, an AI (artificial intelligence) robot Erica is all set to star in a movie titled "b" which began filming in Japan in 2019 and is expected wrap up in Europe by June 2021. Erica's, big break "b" is backed by Bondit Capital Media, which produced Loving Vincent and To the Bone. The other co-producers financing "b" includes New York's 10Ten Media and Happy Moon Productions. "b" is the brainchild of visual effects supervisor Eric Pham, Tarek Zohdy, and Sam Khoze, and explores the journey of an artificially intelligent woman, Erica, who is playing herself.

An artificially intelligent humanoid robot has nabbed the leading role in a $70 million (£56.4 million) upcoming Hollywood sci-fi movie, titled'b'. Erica, the eerily human-like android actress, will play the role of a genetically-modified superhuman who goes on the run with the scientists who created her. The electric leading lady is understood to have shot her first scenes for the movie in Japan last year -- with the rest of the film scheduled to be shot next year. An artificially intelligent humanoid robot has nabbed the leading role in a $70 million (£56.4 million) upcoming Hollywood sci-fi movie, titled ' b '. Erica -- who made her public debut back in 2015 -- is the brainchild of roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro of Japan's Osaka University, who calls his creation the world's'most beautiful and human-like android.'

A creepy life-like robot called Erica is set to become a TV news anchor in Japan. According to her creator Hiroshi Ishiguro, the droid is warm and caring, and may soon have an'independent consciousness'. She has been described as so realistic she could'have a soul'. A robot called Erica (pictured) can not only make jokes but also has a'soul', according to her creator. Very few details have been revealed about Erica's new job, however Dr Ishiguro said she will use AI to read news put together by humans.

Reports The second international conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI-2007) was held in Arlington, Virginia, March 9-11, 2007. The theme of the conference was "Robot as Team Member" and included posters and paper presentations on teamwork, social robotics, adaptation, observation and metrics, attention, user experience, and field testing. One hundred seventy-five researchers and practitioners attended the conference, and many more contributed to the conference as authors or reviewers. HRI-2008 will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands from March 12-15, 2008. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) through SIGCHI and SIGART, and by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Thousands have flooded into Austin, Texas to experience the 31st Annual South by Southwest Convention and Festivals. Check out some of the sights and sounds from the first day. Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro returned SXSW, this time bringing two robots, shown at left. Don't be too concerned about the rise of humanoid robots, because they're still not ready for prime time. But you might want to keep a wary eye on the machine-learning systems that power them.

A humanoid robot named Yangyang is the latest to be revealed in China. Dressed in a full-length coat, the android can display a wide range of facial expressions and can speak, move its head, and raise its hands to greet people convincingly. And the machine bears an uncanny - yet apparently accidental - resemblance to former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Yangyang is one of a number of impressively realistic robots to be unveiled at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) 2015 in Beijing, China. The android was produced jointly by China's Shanghai Yangyang Intelligent Robot Science Service Centre and renowned Japanese robotics professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, who has created some of the world's most eerily lifelike androids.