Friday, March22 Session 4: Dynamical Systems

Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Next Generation Artificial Intelligence ResearchCenter,
School of Information Science and Technology,IRCN,The University of Tokyo

Title
A Constructive Study of Emergence and Development of Embodied Cognition
from Fetal Period
Abstract
Recently many problems are pointed out with current AI systems concerning theirreliability and appropriateness. The problems have their roots on the fundamental
framework as optimization of input-output systems with regard to large but
limited data sets. This severely lacks essential accounts for open-ended dynamic
real wold interaction and alignment to human nature.
Therefore, revealing new principles of real world human intelligence is an urgent
issue. We propose that constructive investigation of the very early humandevelopment in the context of emergence and development of behaviour andcognition from embodied interaction is crucial.
Development is a continuous causal process involving complex interaction
between genes, body, nervous system and environment. Although the wholeprocess may be too complicated, fetal interaction and development can be
relatively more tractable to model. From a dynamical systems point of view, thebeginning part of the temporal development trajectory provides an important
information about the underlying principles governing the developmental
dynamics.
After explaining the nature of embodiment based on several robotic exeriments,
we present our model and experiments on emergent embodied behaviour. The
model consists of chaotic maps embedded in sensory-motor loops and coupledvia embodiment. Behaviours that are consistent with embodiment and adaptive
to environmental structure emerge within a few seconds without any external
reward or learning.
Then, our model and experiments on human foetal development are presented.
A precise musculo-skeletal foetal body model is placed in a uterus model. Driven
by spinal non-linear oscillator circuits coupled together via embodiment,
somatosensory signals are evoked and learned by a model of cerebral cortex with
2.6 million neurons and 5.3 billion synapses (the latest version has 5.25 and 24.8,respectively). The model acquired cortical representations of self-body and multimodal sensory integration. Also, by changing the model parameters, we cansimulate "atypical" development. Our series of experiments shows that sensorymotor experiences in the fetal period can be crucial to the formation of body
representations and multi-modal sensory integration, which are significantly
affected under "preterm birth" conditions, providing new insights about thedevelopmental origins of social cognition and autism spectrum disorders. The
work is important as it models very early autonomous development in realistic
detailed human embodiment. This approach continues on to target infantdevelopment on actual robotic platforms.
Finally, discussions on artificial development toward human-like cognition ispresented including other important factors including motivation, emotion,internal organs and genetic factors.
Biography
Yasuo Kuniyoshi received Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo in 1991 and joinedElectrotechnical Laboratory, AIST, MITI, Japan. From 1996 to 1997 he was aVisiting Scholar at MIT AI Lab. In 2001 he was appointed as an Associate
Professor and then full Professor in 2005 at The University of Tokyo. He is also
the Director of RIKEN CBS-Toyota Collaboration Center since 2012, the Directorof Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Research Center of The University ofTokyo since 2016, and an affiliate member of International Research Center for
Neurointelligence (IRCN) of The University of Tokyo since 2018.
He published over 300 refereed academic papers and received IJCAI 93
Outstanding Paper Award, Gold Medal "Tokyo Techno-Forum21" Award, Best
Paper Awards from Robotics Society of Japan, IEEE ROBIO T.-J. Tarn Best Paper
Award in Robotics, Okawa Publications Prize, and other awards.
He is a Fellow of Robotics Society of Japan and a member of IEEE, Science Council

of Japan (affiliate), Japan Society of Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing
Society of Japan, Japanese Society of Baby Science and the Japan Society ofDevelopmental Neuroscience.
Forfurtherinformationabout

hisresearch,

tokyo.ac.jp/ and http://www.ai.u-tokyo.ac.jp/visithttp://www.isi.imi.i.u-