Mechanisms of imitation and social matching play a fundamental role in development, communication, interaction, learning and culture. Their investigation in different agents (animals, humans and robots) has significantly influenced our understanding of the nature and origins of social intelligence. Whilst such issues have traditionally been studied in areas such as psychology, biology and ethnology, it has become increasingly recognised that a 'constructive approach' towards imitation and social learning via the synthesis of artificial agents can provide important insights into mechanisms and create artefacts that can be instructed and taught by imitation, demonstration, and social interaction rather than by explicit programming. This book studies increasingly sophisticated models and mechanisms of social matching behaviour and marks an important step towards the development of an interdisciplinary research field, consolidating and providing a valuable reference for the increasing number of researchers in the field of imitation and social learning in robots, humans and animals.

This unique text/reference provides a coherent and comprehensive overview of all aspects of video analysis of humans. Broad in coverage and accessible in style, the text presents original perspectives collected from preeminent researchers gathered from across the world. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art research, the book reviews the historical origins of the different existing methods, and predicts future trends and challenges. Features: with a Foreword by Professor Larry Davis; contains contributions from an international selection of leading authorities in the field; includes an extensive glossary; discusses the problems associated with detecting and tracking people through camera networks; examines topics related to determining the time-varying 3D pose of a person from video; investigates the representation and recognition of human and vehicular actions; reviews the most important applications of activity recognition, from biometrics and surveillance, to sports and driver assistance.

In this book, internationally recognised experts from child development, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, primatology and robotics discuss the role of the mirror neuron system for the recognition of hand actions and the evolutionary basis for the brain mechanisms that support language.

From an engineering standpoint, the increasing complexity of robotic systems and the increasing demand for more autonomously learning robots, has become essential. This book is largely based on the successful workshop “From motor to interaction learning in robots” held at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems. The major aim of the book is to give students interested the topics described above a chance to get started faster and researchers a helpful compandium.

An interdisciplinary overview of current research on imitation in animals and artifacts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding, HBU 2012, held in Vilamoura, Portugal, in October 2012. The 14 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on sensing human behavior; social and affective signals; human-robot interaction; imitation and learning from demonstration.

This handbook provides a comprehensive survey of what is now known about psychological development, from birth to biological maturity, and it highlights how cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular processes work together to yield human behavior and changes in human behavior.

The book's content is designed to provide practical guidance and insights for conducting experiments in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and publishing the results in scientific journals. It includes a detailed explanation of how to conduct HRI experiments and what to do and what not to do to get an article accepted for publication. It is tailored to those seeking to deepen their understanding of HRI methodologies, statistical measurements, and research design. The case studies and examples featured in the book focus on interactions between social robots and specific demographics such as children and older adults, making it relevant for individuals working in healthcare, education, and related domains.Also covered are common statistical measurements used in HRI research and quantitative, qualitative, and meta-analyses. The concepts are illustrated with several international case studies of interactions between social robots and children and older adults and robot learning instead of programming. The final chapter explores current trends in HRI and provides insights into what to look for in the coming years. It includes an extensive reference section to help HRI researchers in all these areas.This book will appeal to an international audience of advanced students, researchers, industry, and others who are actively engaged or interested in the field of HRI.

People learn by imitating other people. Authors do the same. This book explains how authors from the earliest stages of Western literature to the present day have imitated each other