CMU talk: Interacting Physically with Robots and Virtually on the Global Digital Campus

SCS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
Yuichiro Anzai
President, Keio University

Abstract:
The lecture presents two topics: one for the research on human-robot interaction conducted in the Anzai-Imai laboratory and the other for the activities of the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content, both at Keio University.
Our research on human-robot interaction, embarked upon in 1991, is concerned with designing technologies that facilitate the smooth interaction of humans with robots. We initially started by designing software and hardware systems that support human-robot interaction, and then moved forward, with Michita Imai and others, to designing robots that can smoothly interact with humans. In some cases we conducted behavioral experiments to find out how a human behaves in an interaction with a robot, and fed the results back to engineering. The first part of the lecture provides a summary of the efforts at our lab during these fifteen years.
The second part of the lecture will focus on the activities of the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content, established in 2004. One of its goals is to use various technologies to extend the reach of our physical campus so that students and faculty members can distribute their academic knowledge to a global audience, interact with people around the world, and have convenient access to globally shared knowledge. We have already set up what we call Global Digital Studios in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Cambridge (UK) and San Francisco, with others scheduled to open in New York and some other locations. Twenty-four higher learning institutions in twelve South-East Asian countries are also tied to this network via satellite Internet. The Studios and sites can be connected online at any time, and are used for many different purposes: the network can be regarded as an early version of our Global Digital Campus. The second part of the lecture gives a glimpse of this effort at Keio University.

Bio:
Born in 1946 in Tokyo, Yuichiro Anzai received his Ph.D. in engineering from Keio University in 1974. After serving at Keio as an assistant professor until 1985, he joined the faculty of Hokkaido University as an associate professor in behavioral science. In 1988 he returned to Keio as a professor in electrical engineering, and became the dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology in 1993. He worked on the reform of the undergraduate departments and graduate programs for more than seven years, and launched new educational and research programs with an innovative structure. Since 2001, he has served as president of Keio University, the oldest modern institution of higher learning in Japan (http://www.keio.ac.jp/index-en.htm) that will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2008, as well as a professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science and the School of Open and Environmental Systems. At present, much of his time is devoted to driving forward the commemorative fundraising campaign and associated programs (http://keio150.jp/english).
Professor Anzai was a post-doc in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, in 1976-78, and in 1981-82 respectively. He was also a visiting professor at the Center for Medical Education, McGill University, in 1990. His fields of research include cognitive science and computer science, particularly cognitive processes in learning and problem solving, and human-robot-computer interaction. He has published about 20 books, single- and co-authored, and more than 120 technical papers in those fields. For public service, he is serving as president of the Information Processing Society of Japan, as president of the Japan Association of Private Universities and Colleges, as a member of the Science Council of Japan, and as a member of the Central Council for Education.