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Infanoid 159— are arranged in a 480-mm-tall upper body. Infanoid is mounted on a tablefor face-to-face interaction with a human caregiver sitting on a chair.Infanoid has a foveated stereo vision head, as shown in Figure 19.1 (right).Each of the eyes has two color CCD cameras like those of Cog [3]; the lowerone has a wide angle lens that spans the visual field (about 120 degrees horizontally),and the upper one has a telephoto lens that takes a close-up image on thefovea (about 20 degrees horizontally). Three motors drive the eyes, controllingtheir direction (pan and common tilt). The motors also help the eyes to performa saccade of over 45 degrees within 100 msec, as well as smooth pursuitof visual targets. The images from the cameras are fed into massively parallelimage processors (IMAP Vision) for facial and non-facial feature tracking,which enables real-time attentional interaction with the interlocutor and with athird object. In addition, the head has eyebrows with 2 DOFs and lips with 2DOFs for natural facial expressions and lip-synching with vocalizations. EachDOF is controlled by interconnected MCUs; high-level sensori-motor informationis processed by a cluster of Linux PCs.Infanoid has been equipped with the following functions: (1) tracking anonspecific human face in a cluttered background; (2) determining roughly thedirection of the human face being tracked; (3) tracking objects with salientcolor and texture, e.g., toys; (4) pointing to or reaching out for an object or aface by using the arms and torso; (5) gazing alternately between the face andthe object; and (6) vocalizing canonical babbling with lip-synching. Currently,we are working on modules for gaze tracking, imperfect verbal imitation, andso on, in order to provide Infanoid with the basic physical skills of 6-to-9-month-olds, as an initial stage for social and communicative development.3. Being intentionalCommunication is the act of sending and receiving physical signals fromwhich the receiver derives the sender’s intention to manifest something in theenvironment (or in the memory) so as to change the receiver’s attention and/or behavioral disposition [8]. This enables us to predict and control others’behavior to some degree for efficient cooperation and competition with others.It is easy to imagine that our species acquired this skill, probably prior to theemergence of symbolic language, as a result of the long history of the strugglefor existence.How do we derive intangible intentions from physically observable behaviorof others? We do that by using empathy, i.e. the act of imagining oneselfin the position of someone else, thereby understanding how he or she feelsand acts, as illustrated in Figure 19.2. This empathetic process arouses in ourmind, probably unconsciously, a mental state similar to that of the interlocutor.But, how can a robot do this? As well as being able to identify itself

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