In this workshop, we will present our results derived from our trans-continental collaboration research project on teleoperated android robots and their applications. Android robots are robots that are made to appear similar to people. And teleoperated androids are androids that are controlled by people to be used as communication device. In our collaboration, we pursued the possibility that teleoperated androids will be a future cellphone device following the popular devices nowadays such as smartphones. These devices will be familiar to humans, and intend to fill the gap between people and information systems. People are versatile. Thus research needs to be approached from versatile fields in many aspects. In this workshop, researchers from various fields, such as from engineering, psychology, philosophy, social care will present their ideas. Besides, researchers from different cultures such as in Japan, Denmark, EU and US will gather to share the results and discuss future directions. This workshop not only targets researchers but also the general public; there will be regular presentations as well as demonstrations where participants will have firsthand experience of the actual robots that we have developed in this project.

JST CREST (Core Research of Evolutional Science & Technology) research project“Studies on Cellphone-type Teleoperated Androids Transmitting Human Presence” is going to finish its five-year research on teleoperated androids. The aim of this study is to develop cellphone-type teleoperated androids that enable us to transmit our presence, anywhere and anytime. A user transmits his/her presence to a remote place and the partner in distant location can talk to him/her while feeling as if they are facing each other. Such new information media have been designed to harmonize human with information environment beyond existing personal computers and cellphones. This study explores its potential as new human-harmonized communication media through social experiments in various countries such as Japan and Denmark.

Denmark is one of the countries with an advanced welfare system, and it makes high-impact strategic decisions for the introduction of welfare technologies. Patient@home   is Denmark's largest welfare-technological research and innovation initiative with focus on new technologies and services. To assess which target groups can use the teleoperated android, a number of partners in Patient@home, i.e., University of Copenhagen , Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) , Osaka University , Danish Institute of Technology (DTI) , and Aarhus University , are testing the robot for use in the Danish healthcare sector, etc.

SOSU Nord   Future Lab cooperates regarding the implementation of robot technology in health and welfare settings. SOSU Nord educates personnel for the social and health sectors. SOSU Nord Future Lab argues that the future staff in the health and welfare sector must be able to work with advanced technologies including teleoperated robots. In the vocational research, SOSU Nord Future Lab takes initiative in investigating the usage of the android robot in dementia care.

Japan-Denmark Cooperation: 

In March 2014, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt visited Japan and had a summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. They released “Joint Statement on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership for Growth and Innovation Between the Government of Japan and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark” for further bilateral cooperation. The two leaders decided to establish concrete cooperation within welfare technology, including robots and assistive technologies, with the aim of developing better treatment and care for citizens within the welfare sector. The two leaders further confirmed their commitment to strengthen cooperation between Japanese and Danish authorities, businesses and research institutions, and to explore possibilities for enhanced cooperation in the welfare sector.

Can teleoperated android robots redefine the way we communicate with each other in the network society? Telecommunications technologies have broadened our opportunities to interact socially with others, and robotics has opened a new frontier for innovation and development of communication media. The JST CREST project has developed portable androids and is in their applications cooperating with SOSU Nord and Patient@home with forward-looking projects of welfare technology. This session describes the novel humanoid robotic approach, while figuring out where we stand today in the evolution of communication media and their services.

With the portable teleoperated androids such as the Telenoid, the JST CREST project proposes a minimal human representation that allows any person to transfer their own presence to a distant location, anywhere and at any time. The androids have the flexibility to look like anybody and embody the project’s intent to keep only the key features involved in the communication for representing humans. This session specifies the design concept, functionalities and basic evaluation of the androids.

Session 3: Portable androids for aged citizens

The study on the portable androids explores their applications in field experiments in which people interact with one another by their mediation. With the focus on the social aspects of androids that may facilitate human communications, the Telenoid has been applied to dementia care in order to observe the elderly’s natural reactions to the robot and to develop service models and new communication media. This session reports the results from Japan and Denmark, and discusses the androids’ potential for aged citizens of different nationalities.

As new human-harmonized communication media, android robots are developed with the hope of them becoming part of our daily life. Technologies are not just neutral instruments, but are inherently embedded in cultural contexts and even consequently could transform us. The possibilities and limitations of all these types of robots can potentially change our society and the human-robot interaction might affect the very way in which we engage with each other and who/what that ‘other’ might be. Robotics challenges our core conceptions of what we are and how we should be. This session aims to explore and expand the contribution of scientific analyses to reflection on human self-discovering through androids.