Interaction rule learning with a human partner based on an imitation faculty with a simple visuo-motor mapping

Imitation has been receiving increasing attention from the viewpoint of not simply generating new motions but also the emergence of communication. This paper proposes a system for a humanoid who obtains new motions through learning the interaction rules with a human partner based on the assumption of the mirror system. First, a humanoid learns the correspondence between its own posture and the partner’s one on the ISOMAPs supposing that a human partner imitates the robot motions. Based on this correspondence, the robot can easily transfer the observed partner’s gestures to its own motion. Then, this correspondence enables a robot to acquire the new motion primitive for the interaction. Furthermore, through this process, the humanoid learns an interaction rule that control gesture turn-taking. The preliminary results and future issues are given.