FONDAZIONE GIANNINO BASSETTI

Artificial Empathy: a research diary.

Today's sciences of the artificial extend all the way to the domain of emotions. The recent re-inclusion of the emotional dimension within cognition, in the scientific trend that considers knowing as a form of doing - constructing, creating, fabricating - transforms our understanding of cognitive processes. In our we present the (relatively still brute) result of our encounters with researchers in the field of artificial agents and empathy, in order to receive comments and criticisms and initiate discussions from which we will profit, and where visitors of the Foundation's website can gain information and participate in shared reflection. - More 

Report I - Communication Robots ATR

On January 26 we visited ATR (Advanced Telecomunication Research Institute International) a Japanese company of which some branches are specialised in the production of robots and whose headquarters are located close to Kyoto. Our interlocutor was Dr. Takayuki Kanda who gave us a a warm reception and detailed description of the research dedicated to in robots destined to social use. - More 

Springer Handbook of Robotics

On February 5, the "Springer Handbook of Robotics" by Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Khatib has won two awards "PROS Awards 2008". Prose Awards are the American equivalent of the Oscar awards in the scientific and professional field. Inside, a chapter of Veruggio and Operto entitled "Roboethics: Social and Ethical Implications of Robotics" which discusses the basic principles of roboethics, new ethics applied to robotics and robot lemmas. - More 

The mechanization of Empathy in Health Care - 1. Maja J. Matarić

On January 24, 2009 was held at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto an international workshop on "technology and empathy in the context of health care". Given the thematic orientation of this blog, the followsing report will concentrate on the second half of the workshop (centered on the relational implications of the therapeutic use of robots) that was organized around the interventions of two internationally recognised pioneers in the therapeutic use of robots. - More 

The mechanization of Empathy in Health Care - 2. Takanori Shibata

Second part of the report on "technology and empathy in the context of health care" held in January. During the conference, Dr. Shibata presented essential aspects of the idea of a "Robot Therapy". Dr. Shibata is Senior Researcher at Japan's Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology AIST (Tsukuba, Japan). He is the inventor of PARO. - More 

What are the nature and functions of artificial agents?

These are the questions we use when we first interview a researcher. - More