Quick Facts
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Biography
Hiroshi Ishiguro (石黒浩 Ishiguro Hiroshi) is director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Japan. A notable development of the laboratory is the Actroid, a humanoid robot with lifelike appearance and visible behaviour such as facial movements.
Work
In robot development, Ishiguro concentrates on the idea of making a robot that is as similar as possible to a live human being; at the unveiling in July 2005 of the female android named Repliee Q1Expo, he was quoted as saying "I have developed many robots before, but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence. ... Repliee Q1Expo can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet." In his opinion, it may be possible to build an android that is indistinguishable from a human, at least during a brief encounter.
Ishiguro has made an android that resembles him, called the Geminoid. The Geminoid was among the robots featured by James May in his 5 October 2008 BBC2 documentary on robots Man-Machine in his series Big Ideas. He also introduced a telecommunication robot called the Telenoid R1. Ishiguro has been listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine on 15 May 2011.
Career timeline
- 1986.3: Graduate of University of Yamanashi
- 1991.3: Graduate of the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University
- 1994.10: Associate Professor at Kyoto University
- 1998.3: Visiting Fellow of University of California, San Diego
- 2000.4: Associate Professor of Wakayama University
- 2001.4: Professor of Wakayama University
- 2003.4: Professor of Osaka University
Awards
- Prize for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), April 2015
- Best paper award at the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2009), March 2009
- Best paper and poster awards at the 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2007), March 2007
- Best Humanoid Award (Kid size) at RoboCup 2006 (Bremen, Germany)
Publications
Books
Papers
Movie appearances
- Mechanical Love (2007) Ishiguro and his work forms a major component of this documentary on the interrelationship between humans and robots.
- Surrogates (2009) During the opening montage showing the development of the surrogates, there appears footage of Ishiguro and his Geminoid.
- Plug & Pray (2010) Ishiguro is one of the scientists featured in the film
- Samsara (2011 film)