English publication on the rise of Japanese industrial robots and their role within Japa-nese society in the West comes from technology writer and translator Frederik L.Schodt (1988) with his book “Inside the Robot Kingdom”. For his publication, Schodt uses a large number of Japanese sources, interviews representatives from industry and politics as well as visits robot manufacturers. He moreover analyses the competition within this in-dustrial sector and its attempts for first international cooperation, and he also evaluates future-oriented government programs. Schodt interprets the rise of industrial robots and the role of pop culture in acceptance of robots in Japan. As the subtitle of his publication
suggests, for Schodt, the ‘coming robotopia’ is no pure reverie. Even though his publica-tion is from a late eighties economic expansion phase, it remains a reference for under-standing the state of Japanese robotics before 1990.
In the new millennium, Timothy Hornyak (2006) published his book “Loving the Machine”, which tries to tie into Schodt’s findings. In contrast to Schodt’s focus on industrial robots, Hornyak is especially highlighting the history and current state of the art of Japanese humanoid robots. For this purpose, Hornyak conducted interviews with the developers of several humanoid robots on their popularity, expectations and vision of the future for robots in Japan. A limitation of his publication is that his broad empirical data collection and the update on the current state of robotics is not based in scientific grounding and evaluation.
Schodt’s and Hornyak’s publications are representative for Western research on robots in Japan. More than the industrial robot, the focus is mostly on the relationship of human and humanoid robot. Even though up to now the research on humanoid robots was still in the stage of development, their technical capabilities are very limited and there is no significant practical value or specific fields of applications. They are preferred to industrial robots, which revolutionized production in the seventies, and provided the basis for cur-rent developments in robotics. This means that curcur-rent Western research focuses on media attention to the spectacular phenomenon of humanoid robots.
Miriam J.S. Leis’ (2006) publication with the promising title “Robots – Our Future Partners”
(Leis 2006) examines the role, perceptions and acceptance of robots as future partners for humans by contrasting Germany and Japan. The publication gains interesting inter-pretation and evaluation patterns through several excurses, i.e. phenomenons, like the AIBO fan club. The publication is written from the perspective of somebody who might sympathize with AIBO, and it would have been interesting to see her findings more in relation to academic discussion.
The publication of Cosima Wagner (2013) “Robotopia Nipponica” explains the social ac-ceptance and cultural popularity of robots in Japan. Her work considers a broad spectrum of Japanese sources and interviews with Japanese robot experts. Robots are evaluated as a metaphor for the complex use of the creation and implementation of technological artefacts, which are influenced by the interdependency of culture and history, expecta-tions of the Japanese government and economy, and the challenges of sociocultural change caused by a rapidly aging society. Wagner critically shows that the often-men-tioned arguments for the cultural robot-affinity of the Japanese, such as a long technical
tradition with robots, the religious perception toward inanimate objects and positive illus-trations in pop culture, is mostly a matter of ‘invented traditions’ (Wagner 2009).
Apart from these main studies in English literature, there is a wide range of Japanese sources about robotics. This includes scientific and also popular publications, such as robot construction instructions for scientifically interested young people (e.g. Luo 2009).
There are also publications that explain robotics, with the example of Doraemon (e.g.
Fujiko 2014) or Astro Boy (e.g. Fukuda 2003) This also goes over to engineers (e.g.
Yoshifuji 2017; Furuta 2010) who use the narrative of their own story to show that robots can change lives and society for the better. In addition to these rather technical and scientific publications, there is an increasing number of publications on service and do-mestic robots, which demonstrates the interest in their social use. Regardless of the publication genre, a common point is that the publications are rather non-critical.
Comprehensive surveys on the historical development of robots for the entire 20th cen-tury are rare. Covering the first half of the 20th century, Haruki Inoue (1993) traces the introduction and diffusion of the term robot in Japan and in his subsequent publication
“History of Robots in Japan during the War 1939-1945”60 (Haruki Inoue (2007). He illus-trates the genesis and adoption of the image of robots as human helpers and servants.
For the second half of the 20th century, Hirochika Inoue et al. (2004) published with “Ro-botics Creation”61 the first volume of the seven-volume series of the Iwanami Series. The first volume focuses on robotics and their history. It starts with a chronical description of robot ideas and concepts after the Second World War, but also includes the emergence of modern robotics up to today.
Besides, there are several Japanese pioneers in robotic research with a special ap-proach, who have an impact on current development within the field of robotics, as well as influence the discussion on the use of robots within society. The following two engi-neers are exemplary for this group of robot pioengi-neers.
The bionic engineer Hirose Shigeo, Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is working on various movement types of robots, including for example walking, crawling and swimming robots. Moreover, he is actively engaged in the research and develop-ment of mine exploration and disaster response robots, and also contributed to an
60 In Japanese: nihon robotto sensōki 1939-1945 日本ロボット戦争記 1939‐1945
61 In Japanese: robottogaku sōsei ロボット学創成
derwater exploration robot for the investigation of the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Reac-tor after the Tōhoku earthquake in March 2011 (Hirose 2013). He published about cop-ying movement types of certain animals into robots, such as snakes (Hirose 1987b), but also published two general introductions on robotics “Robotics－Vector Analysis of Me-chanical System”62 (Hirose 1987a) and “Introduction to Robotics “63 (Hirose 2011). His research is based on bionic engineering and aims at a technology transfer from nature into robotics with a utilizable research outcome. Against this background, Hirose (1998) is questioning the usefulness of humanoid robots.
The android researcher Ishiguro Hiroshi is a Professor at Osaka University and director of the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at the Institute for Advanced Telecommunication Re-search; he receives a lot of attention by the media (cp. Adina 2017; Fehr and Macho Andreas, December 02, 2018; Omura) for his research on androids and their interaction with humans. Androids are intended to be realistic humanoid robots that look and act like their human originals. His research is dedicated to the idea of making a robot that is indistinguishable from a real human being, even if it is only for a short moment (Ishiguro 2007, 2012). This idea is not only limited to publications on the related philosophical issues, such as the essence of a robot (Ishiguro 2009) and human being (Ishiguro 2011), but also the technical realization of his highly realistic robots through advanced robot systems. For him the advantage of a humanoid appearance is that the robot needs no special adjustment to a human environment, and thus is easily integrated into daily life.
Android research is trying to overcome the uncanny valley and current research seems to prove some success towards the development of realistic human copies under certain circumstances. An important difference to Mori’s theory (cp. Mori 1970) is that in contrast to the seventies, when the uncanny valley theory was published, technological progress today makes it possible to verify the impact of design and movement on the robot’s ac-ceptance.