The design of artificial empathy is one of the most essential issues in social robotics. This is because empathic interactions with ordinary people are needed to introduce robots into our society. Several attempts have been made for specific situations. However, such attempts have provided several limitations; thus, diminishing authenticity. The present article proposes “affective developmental robotics (hereafter, ADR),” which provides more authentic artificial empathy based on the concept of cognitive developmental robotics (hereafter, CDR). First, the evolution and development of empathy as revealed in neuroscience and biobehavioral studies are reviewed, moving from emotional contagion to envy and schadenfreude. These terms are then reconsidered from the ADR/CDR viewpoint, particularly along the developmental trajectory of self-other cognition. Next, a conceptual model of artificial empathy is proposed based on an ADR/CDR viewpoint and discussed with respect to several existing studies. Finally, a general discussion and proposals for addressing future issues are given.

We have been advocating cognitive developmental robotics to obtain new insight into the development of human cognitive functions by utilizing synthetic and constructive approaches. Among the different emotional functions, empathy is difficult to model, but essential for robots to be social agents in our society. In my previous review on artificial empathy (Asada, 2014b), I proposed a conceptual model for empathy development beginning with emotional contagion to envy/schadenfreude along with self/other differentiation. In this article, the focus is on two aspects of this developmental process, emotional contagion in relation to motor mimicry, and cognitive/affective aspects of the empathy. It begins with a summary of the previous review (Asada, 2014b) and an introduction to affective developmental robotics as a part of cognitive developmental robotics focusing on the affective aspects. This is followed by a review and discussion on several approaches for two focused aspects of affective developmental robotics. Finally, future issues involved in the development of a more authentic form of artificial empathy are discussed.

This paper describes a flexible and soft tactile sensor that measures the tri-axis force based on inductance measurement. The proposed sensor has four spiral inductors printed on a flexible circuit board and a mounted cylindrical elastomer (silicon rubber). A disk-shaped magnetorheological elastomer (ferromagnetic marker) is embedded in the cylindrical elastomer and its 3-D displacement is estimated by monitoring the inductance changes of the four inductors. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between the applied tri-axis force and inductance changes. Our results can be summarized as follows: 1) the inductance changes of the four inductors were monotonic and linear against the applied normal and shear force; 2) the applied tri-axis force could be estimated well with linear functions of the sum and difference of the measured inductances; and 3) the estimation error of the tri-axis force increased when a larger force was applied and/or faster contact speeds were used.

Child development is seriously affected by social interactions with caregivers, which may lead to forming social minds in our daily life afterward. However, the underlying neural mechanism for such interactions has not yet been revealed. This article introduces a magnetoencephalographic (MEG) hyperscanning system to examine brain-to-brain interactions between a mother and her child.We used two whole-head MEG systems placed in the same magnetically-shielded room. One is a 160-channel gradiometer system for an adult and the other is a 151-channel gradiometer system for a child. We developed an audio-visual presentation system, which enabled a mother and her child to look at each other in real time. In each MEG system, a video camera was placed behind a half-mirror screen for visual presentation to obtain the subjects’ facial expressions. The visual presentation system is capable of displaying not only real-time facial expression but also processed facial expression such as a still face or delayed facial expressions. A projector system displays the side-by-side face images of the mother and child, and the images are divided into each face using splitting mirrors and each face is displayed on the half-mirror screen in front of the other subject.To the best of our knowledge, our system is the first MEG hyperscanning system in a single shielded room, and may contribute to elucidating brain-to-brain interactions not only between a mother and her child but also in general inter-individual, brain-to-brain interactions.