Since january 2008, I am a research scientist in INRIA Bordeaux - Sud-Ouest, heading the FLOWERS team, in developmental and social robotics. Before that, I have been a permanent researcher in Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris for 8 years (2000-2007). I studied computer science in Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and obtained my PhD in artificial intelligence from University Paris VI. I am interested in the mechanisms that allow humans and robots to develop perceptual, motivational, behavioral and social capabilities to become capable of sharing cultural representations and of natural embodied interaction.

 

In particular, I use robots to study how new linguistic conventions can be established in a society of individuals. There is a double objective: 1) contributing to the understanding of the origins of language (see my book), 2) developing new technological approaches for building intelligent sociable robots. This is concretized through my work in developmental robotics, also called epigenetic robotics, in which I have developed artificial curiosity systems as well as biologically inspired methods of human-robot interaction.

 

 

Note for students: If you are interested in doing a master's, a PhD thesis or a postdoc in developmental and/or social robotics at INRIA, please send me an email.

 

 

Selected publications on:

Developmental robotics, intrinsic motivation, and artificial curiosity:

Oudeyer P-Y, Kaplan , F. and Hafner, V. (2007) Intrinsic Motivation Systems for Autonomous Mental Development, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 11(2), pp. 265--286. DOI: 10.1109/TEVC.2006.890271. (html)

Self-organization, complex-systems and the origins of speech:

Oudeyer, P-Y. (2006) Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech, Studies in the Evolution of Language, Oxford University Press. (Translation by James R. Hurford)

Oudeyer, P-Y. (2005) The Self-Organization of Speech Sounds, Journal of Theoretical Biology,  233(3), pp. 435--449. (html)  

The origins of combinatoriality and phonotactics in speech:

Oudeyer, P-Y. (2005) The self-organization of combinatoriality and phonotactics in vocalization systems, Connection Science, 17(3-4), pp. 325--341  

Language evolution conceptualized as a cultural Darwinian process:

Oudeyer, P-Y. and Kaplan, F. (2007) Language Evolution as a Darwinian Process: Computational Studies, Cognitive Processing, 8(1), pp. 21--35. DOI: 10.1007/s10339-006-0158-3

Language acquisition, cognitive development and learnability:

Kaplan, F., Oudeyer, P-Y., Bergen B. (2008) Computational Models in the Debate over Language Learnability, Infant and Child Development, 17(1), pp. 55--80.

Oudeyer, P-Y (2005) How phonological structures can be culturally selected for learnability, Adaptive Behavior, 13(4), pp. 269--280.

Oudeyer P-Y., Kaplan F. (2006) Discovering Communication, Connection Science, 18(2), pp. 189--206.

Emotional speech synthesis and recognition:

Oudeyer P-Y. (2003) The production and recognition of emotions in speech: features and algorithms, International Journal in Human-Computer Studies, 59(1-2), pp. 157--183, special issue on Affective Computing. 

Robot behavioral shaping:

Kaplan, F., Oudeyer, P-Y., Kubinyi, E. and Miklosi, A. (2002) Robotic clicker training. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 38(3-4), pp. 197--206.

  more papers ...