At the 44th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ 2026), held from 1 to 4 September 2026 at the Kakuma Campus of Kanazawa University, Tetsunari Inamura, the principal investigator of this project, gave the keynote talk of Organized Session OS26 “Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)” on 2 September, entitled “Self-Mirroring Twins: Human-Robot Interaction that Designs the Space Between Self and Others” (paper no. 1C3-01, Room C / Lecture Hall).
About the Talk
A Self-Mirroring Twin (SeMT), the agent at the heart of this project, presents users with a mirrored image of themselves. It is therefore neither the self nor another person, but something in between. Taking the question of how to design this space between self and others as its axis, the talk presented the SeMT concept together with the project’s work on behavior change, self-efficacy and human agency.
About the Session
OS26 “Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)” addresses how people of all ages, from children to older adults, can interact naturally with robots, against the background of rapid advances in robot hardware and AI — the arrival of physical AI and foundation models. At RSJ 2026 it ran across eight session slots, making it one of the largest organized sessions of the conference.
The RSJ Annual Conference is the largest academic conference in robotics in Japan. Presenting the themes SeMT addresses — human agency and self-efficacy — at the heart of the Japanese HRI community is an important step toward the interdisciplinary research community this project aims to build.