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158 Socially Intelligent Agentsunderstand and influence our mental states, like desires and beliefs; it wouldthus be able to predict and control our behavior, as well as to be predicted andcontrolled by us, to some degree. We would regard this robot as a social being,with whom we would cooperate and compete in our social activities.The discussion above suggests that social intelligence should have an ontogenetichistory that is open to further development and that the ontogenyshould be similar to that of human interlocutors in a cultural and linguisticcommunity [10]. Therefore, we are “bringing up” a robot in a physical and socialenvironment equivalent to that experienced by a human infant. Section 2introduces our infant robot, Infanoid, as an embodiment of a human infant withfunctionally similar innate constraints. Sections 3 to 5 describe how the robotacquires human communicative behavior through its interaction with humancaregivers. The robot first acquires intentionality, then identifies with othersmainly by means of joint attention, and finally understands the communicativeintentions of others’ behavior.2. Infanoid, the BabybotWe begin with the premise that any socially communicative intelligencemust have a naturalistic embodiment, i.e. a robot that is structurally and functionallysimilar to human sensori-motor systems. The robot interacts with itsenvironment in the same way as humans do, implicitly sharing its experiencewith human interlocutors, and gets situated in the environment shared withhumans [10].Figure 19.1.Infanoid, an upper torso humanoid (left), and its head (right).Our robot, Infanoid, shown in Figure 19.1 (left), is being constructed as apossible naturalistic embodiment for communicative development. Infanoidpossesses approximately the same kinematic structure of the upper body of athree-year-old human infant. Currently, 25 degrees of freedom (DOFs) — 7 inthe head, 3 in the neck, 6 in each arm (excluding the hand), and 3 in the trunk