A firm cognitive subject or “individual” is presupposed for the emergence of mind. However, with the development of recent information technology, the “individual” has become more dispersed in society and the cognitive subject has become increasingly unstable and adaptive, necessitating an update in our understanding of the individual”. Autopoiesis serves as a model of the cognitive subject, which is unstable and requires effort to maintain itself to adapt to the environment. In this study, we evaluated adaptivity for a highly extensible multi-particle system model Particle Lenia through the response perturbation. As a result, we found that Particle Lenia has a particle configuration that is both temporally unstable and has multiple stable states. This result suggests that Particle Lenia can express adaptive characteristics and is expected to be used as a computational model toward building an autopoietic cognitive agent.

We, humans, have innate brain function to recognize humans. Therefore, very humanlike robots, androids, can be ideal information media for human-robot/computer interaction. The speaker has developed various types of interactive robots and androids. Geminoid that is a teleoperated android of an existing person can transmit the presence of the operator to the distant place. The operator recognizes the android body as his/her own body after talking with someone through the geminoid and has virtual feeling to be touched when someone touches to the geminoid. However, the geminoid is not the ideal medium for everybody. For example, elderly people often hesitate to talk with adult humans and the adult androids. A question is what the ideal medium for everybody is. In order to investigate it, the speaker proposes the minimum design of interactive humanoids. It is called Telenoid. The geminoid is the perfect copy of an existing person and it is the maximum design of interactive humanoids. On the other hand, the minimum design looks like a human but we cannot judge the age and gender. Elderly people like to talk with the Telenoid very much. In this talk, the speaker discusses the design principles for the robots and their effects to conversations with humans.

Based on the principle of artificial life, we developed an upper-body android called "Alter." Alter is human-like in appearance, receives sensory information from the outside via an autonomous sensor system located around the android, and moves spontaneously using two autonomous systems of internal dynamics. Its body and arms contain a central pattern generator with seven degrees of freedom and hundreds of plastic artificial neurons. We investigated Alter’s environmental adaptability and the spontaneity of is behavioral patterns. In addition, we discuss the conditions under which a robot can become lifelike.