News | Takato Horii | Osaka University

Upcoming Talk at the 21st IEICE DPF Technical Meeting

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I will give a talk at the 21st Technical Meeting of the IEICE Special Technical Committee on Digital Service Platform Technology (DPF), to be held on Friday, June 5, 2026 in hybrid format at Fujitsu Technology Park (Musashi-Nakahara) and on WebEx.

Talk title: “From Cybernetic Avatars to Physical AI: Autonomy Strategies Centered on Bodily Augmentation and Skill Transfer”

The meeting is themed around “Physical AI: Autonomous and Cooperative Intelligence at the Intersection of Cyber and Physical Spaces.”

Admission is free; the meeting runs approximately 13:30–17:30 JST.

For details and registration, please visit the .

Four Presentations at JSAI 2026 (40th Annual Conference of JSAI)

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our lab will give the following four presentations at the 40th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI 2026), to be held June 8–12, 2026 at G-Messe Gunma and online.

Organized Session: Physical AI in the Era of Foundation Models

Shogo Yanagida (Osaka Univ.), Tatsuya Aoki (Osaka Univ.), Tadahiro Taniguchi (Kyoto Univ. / Ritsumeikan Univ.), Takato Horii (Osaka Univ. / IRCN, Univ. of Tokyo) Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 13:30–15:00 — Room G (Main Hall A)

Sizhe Li (Osaka Univ.), Tatsuya Aoki (Osaka Univ.), Takato Horii (Osaka Univ. / IRCN, Univ. of Tokyo) Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 17:30–19:00 — Room G (Main Hall A)

Organized Session: AI Alignment

Kentaro Nomura (Osaka Univ.), Takato Horii (Osaka Univ. / IRCN, Univ. of Tokyo) Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 9:00–10:30 — Room I (Medium Conference Room 202A)

Organized Session: AI and Creativity — Beyond Imitation of Humans

Makoto Teshirogi (Osaka Univ.), Futa Hidaka (Osaka Univ.), Yuichiro Yoshikawa (Osaka Univ.), Takato Horii (Osaka Univ. / IRCN, Univ. of Tokyo) Thursday, June 11, 2026, 9:00–10:30 — Room G (Main Hall A)

For details, see the .

Upcoming Talk at the 2nd Osaka University OCEANS Symposium

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I will give a talk and join a panel discussion at the 2nd Osaka University OCEANS Symposium — “Down-to-Earth AI Development with the Maritime Industry,” to be held on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 at the MO Hall, 3F Convention Center, Osaka University Suita Campus.

Project Report (6): “Multi-Robot Coordination Using Large Language Models” (15:35–15:50)
Panel Discussion: Panelist for “Expected Outcomes of BRIDGE and the Path Ahead” (16:20–17:20)

The symposium is hosted by the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, in partnership with Imabari Shipbuilding, Japan Marine United, ClassNK, and MTI. It focuses on practical AI development for the shipbuilding and maritime industries.

Admission is free. The on-site venue is limited to 150 attendees (registration required); online participation has no capacity limit.

For details and registration, please visit the .

New Paper Published in IEEE Access: Distance-Aware World Model-based Reinforcement Learning

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our paper “Distance-Aware World Model-based Reinforcement Learning for Mobile Manipulation Behaviors,” authored by Xiaoxu Feng (doctoral student) and Takato Horii, has been accepted and published as Early Access (open access, CC-BY) in IEEE Access.

This work tackles end-to-end learning of mobile manipulation by jointly addressing embodiment selection (whether to move the base or use the arm) and motion planning within a single world model-based reinforcement learning framework. To overcome the limitations of similarity-based rewards in latent space, we explicitly incorporate 3D spatial information into the world model and derive a distance-aware reward for policy training. At the high level, a reachability-based reward enables rational switching between locomotion and manipulation. Extensive simulation experiments with both fixed and randomized target settings show that our approach achieves near-perfect motion success rates and substantially more rational arm activations than baseline composite-reward formulations.

This work was supported by JST Moonshot R&D (JPMJMS2011).

Authors: Xiaoxu Feng, Takato Horii (Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka)
Journal: IEEE Access (Early Access, May 21, 2026)
DOI:
Paper:

YouTube Released: Crosstalk Battle 'Can Emotions Be Implemented in Robots? Takato Horii vs. Suzuki'

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A crosstalk battle, “Can Emotions Be Implemented in Robots? Takato Horii vs. Suzuki,” has been released on YouTube. This is a special edition of “Symbol Emergence Crosstalk,” recorded at CPC Camp 2026 (the spring research camp on Collective Predictive Coding and Symbol Emergence Systems, 2026).

“Do you think robots can have emotions?” — a serious dialogue between researchers.

Moe Nakamura Wins the Outstanding Presentation Award at JSKE Spring 2026

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the 21st Spring Conference of the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering (JSKE), held from March 16 to 18, 2026 at the Yoto Campus of Utsunomiya University, Ms. Moe Nakamura (POLA Chemical Industries; joining the lab as a working-adult doctoral student (D1) from April 2026) received the Outstanding Presentation Award.

Presentation title: “Contrastive Learning of Tactile Impressions and Physical Features from Free-Description Data – Connecting Free Verbal Expressions of Touch to Design”
Authors: Moe Nakamura, Kentaro Nomura, Koji Mizukoshi, Takaya Oishi, Toshiki Ikejima, Takato Horii

For details, see the .

Kentaro Nomura Selected as MVP at CPC Spring Camp 2026

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At “CPC Spring Camp 2026,” a spring research camp on Collective Predictive Coding and Symbol Emergence Systems held from March 21 to 26, 2026, Mr. Kentaro Nomura (M2 in our lab) was selected as MVP.

For details, see the .

Interview Article 'Can We Build a Robot That Has Emotions?' Published

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 11th installment of the serial interview “Adventures in Qualia” has been published on Yomitai, a web media outlet of Shueisha.

In the interview, titled “Can We Build a Robot That Has Emotions?”, I discuss our research on robotic emotions and qualia.

Read the article here:

Appearance on YouTube 'Hakase to Doukeshi': I Want to Be Killed by a Robot.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I appeared on the YouTube channel “Hakase to Doukeshi” (The Doctor and the Jester). In the episode with the provocative title “I Want to Be Killed by a Robot.”, I discuss what it would mean for a robot to truly have emotions.

Appearance on YouTube 'Hakase to Doukeshi': It Seems Robots Need a Heart…

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I appeared on the YouTube channel “Hakase to Doukeshi” (The Doctor and the Jester). In the episode titled “It Seems Robots Need a Heart…,” I discuss the relationship between embodiment and emotion.

Appearance on YouTube 'Hakase to Doukeshi': If You Want to Know the True Nature of Emotion, Look at Robots

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I appeared on the YouTube channel “Hakase to Doukeshi” (The Doctor and the Jester). In the episode titled “If You Want to Know the True Nature of Emotion, Look at Robots,” I discuss our approach to emotion research through robotics.

Invited Talk at the 2nd OCEANS Workshop

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the 2nd OCEANS Workshop held at the Suita Campus of The University of Osaka on March 11, 2026, I gave an invited talk titled “Multi-Robot Cooperation with Large Language Models and Multimodal Instruction for Vision-Language-Action Models.” The workshop was held under the theme “Utilization of Robotics and AI on Shipyard Floors.”

For details, see the .

Invited Talk at the 2026 IEICE General Conference

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the invited symposium session “AI Robots and System Mathematics” of the 2026 IEICE General Conference, I gave an invited talk titled “Symbol Emergence Robotics for Creating Symbiotic Robots and Understanding Humans.”

See the for details.

Invited Talk at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Research on Emotions

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At the symposium “Cross-points between Emotion Research and Adjacent Fields” of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Research on Emotions (October 25, 2025, Light Cube Utsunomiya), I gave an invited talk titled “Constructive Approach to Understanding Emotion: Bridging Interoception and Social Interaction with Computational Models.”

The symposium offered an interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive developmental robotics, aiming to rethink the essence of emotion across disciplines. I gave a presentation together with Dr. Motoyuki Sanada (NICT) and Dr. Akira Uematsu (AIST).

For details, see the .