Bridge to Fukui

Every year from 1993 to 2001 except 1999, Dr. Takashi Gomi organized an evolutionary robotics (ER) symposium in Tokyo, lining up excellent guest speakers that included not only established researchers but also upand-coming young researchers involved in NewFashioned Artificial Intelligence (NEWFAI). Most of these speakers, who are listed in Table 1, are now well known. Considering the fact that the first symposium was 20 years ago and that Dr. Gomi could seek out good researchers across the globe shows his keen intuition. Each speaker was given an hour to talk, allowing audiences ample time to understand and appreciate their speech and philosophy in depth. Each and every symposium drew around 100 participants, myself included. Dr. Gomi kindly accepted an offer to present a talk at the University of Fukui, and then served as a guest professor at an industry–university collaboration centre for 2 years from 1997 (Figure 1). During his term, he visited Fukui 10 times, and presented lectures to students and faculty members as well as to engineers and managers of regional industries. His lectures were easily understandable and suggested a wealth of possibilities, leaving his audiences very much impressed. In 1998, Dr. Gomi helped to organize a Fukui version of the ER symposium, and brought five distinguished speakers to the Fukui International Activity Plaza. The symposium had over 300 people in attendance, including students, faculty members, regional engineers, entrepreneurs, and retirees. Simultaneous interpretation into Japanese allowed everyone to listen enthusiastically to the talks, and similar symposia continued to be held every other year until 2004, as shown in Table 2. Through these events, the University of Fukui became convinced to establish a NEWFAI-oriented department, resulting in the governmental approval of the Department of Human and Artificial Intelligence Systems (HART) in 1999. The Department had undergraduate and graduate enrolment quotas of 65 and 27 per year, respectively, and 16 faculty positions were created, with faculty specialties in neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics, autonomous systems, robotics, man–machine interface, biomedical engineering, and computer science. Courses offered by the Department were developed in an attempt to implement interdisciplinary synergy. The government also allocated funds to build a new 13-storey building to house the department. Fortunately, the Department has attracted many students over the past 15 years, and graduates have enjoyed numerous employment opportunities. Dr. Gomi received a message from Professor R. Brooks of MIT for the HART 2002 symposium. Professor Brooks wrote,