One of the important research areas in Japan has been towards developing systems that are inspired by and resemble human appearance. Professor Ishiguro has been one of the leading researchers in this field, building human like robots, and even a robot that is a copy of himself.
The focus in Europe has been rather on developing software - or behaviours - that make robots of different appearance interact with a human in natural manner. Dr Castellano is going to present recent advances in this area.