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2026: Social Understanding and Artificial Intelligence

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19th Annual German-Japanese Colloquium

Social Understanding and Artificial Intelligence - Group-Photo

Organizer：JSPS Bonn Office, The German JSPS Alumni Association
Host：Stuttgart Media University、The University of Tokyo
Date：March 8-11, 2026
Venue：Stuttgart Media University

Program

March 8th
19:00 Networking meeting (Restaurant Kurose, Stuttgart Feuersee)

March 9th
08:30 Registration
09:00 Welcome and opening remarks
Prof. Dr. Boris Kühnle (Rector, HdM)
Mr. Ken-ichi Bessho (Consul General of Japan in Munich)
Group Photo[

Session I (Chair: Prof. Dr. Yusuke Sugano)
09:30 Social robots / Android Science 

  • 09:30 – Dr. Jauwairia Nasir (University of Augsburg, Germany)
    Machines that Understand: Toward Socially Intelligent Embodied Machines
  • 10:00 – Prof. Dr. Yoshihiro Nakata (University of Electro-Communications Toyko)
    Engineering Lifelikeness Exploring Cues of Life – Android Avatar, Interactive Edible Robot, and Minimal Morphing Robot
10:30 Coffee break
 
  • 11:00 – Prof. Dr. Stefan Kopp (Bielefeld University)
    Socially Interactive Cognitive Collaboration Machines
  • 11:30 – Prof. Dr. Christian Becker-Asano (Stuttgart Media University)
    Android robots for socially interactive communication in the wild
12:00 Lunch break

Session II (Chair: Prof. Dr. Christian Becker-Asano)
13:00 Eye-Tracking / Sensor input

  • 13:00 – Prof. Dr. Atsuhi Nakazawa (Okayama University)
    Lessons from Healthcare Communication for Multimodal AI, Social Robots, and Large Language Models
  • 13:30 – Prof. Dr. Thies Pfeiffer (Hochschule Emden-Leer)
    Analyzing gaze in Virtual prototyping: Between hopes and challenges
  • 14:00 – Prof. Dr. Yusuke Sugano (Tokyo University)
    AI That Sees Everyone: From In-the-Wild Gaze Capture to Participatory Design
  • 14:30 – Prof. Dr. Koji Inoue (Kyoto University)
    MaAI: Non-linguistic Translation with a Multimodal Dialogue Foundation Model
15:15 Coffee break

Session III (Chair: Prof. Dr. Stefan Kopp)
15:45 Psychology / Sociology

  • 15:45 – Prof. Dr. Juliane Richter (Stuttgart Media University)
    User Perceptions of Value in Social Robots: Context-Specific Capabilities and Psychological Benefits
  • 16:15 – Prof. Dr. Astrid Rosenthal von der Pütten (RWTH Aachen)
    Conflicts in human-robot groups
  • 16:45 – Prof. Dr. Yukie Nagai (Tokyo University)
    Intelligence as Prediction: The Predictive Brain in Robots and Children
17:15 Introduction of JSPS, JST International Programs

  • Mr. Tomomi Onodera (JSPS-Bonn Office)
  • Mr. Hirotaka Yamada (JST-Paris Office)
17:45 Closing remarks
Prof. Dr. Masahiko Hayashi (JSPS Bonn Office)
19:00 Networking Dinner (Restaurant Römerhof, Stuttgart Vaihingen)

March 10th
Session IV (Chair: Prof. Dr. Yusuke Sugano)
08:30 Humanoid Lab visit
09:00

Student presentations

  • 09:00 – Dr. Yilin Wen
  • 09:20 – Marcel Heisler
  • 09:50 – Kang Caixin
  • 10:10 – Mandischer Nils
  • 10:30 – Christopher Zysik
  • 10:50 – Thomas Sievers
11:15 Coffee break

Session V 
11:30 Working in three groups
12:30 Presentation of results
13:00 Closing remarks
Prof. Dr. Christian Becker-Asano (Stuttgart Media University)
13:05 Lunch break
13:45

Starting to the Mercedes Benz Museum by Bus
14:30 Mercedes Benz Museum
19:00 Networking Banquet (Plenum)

March 11th
10:00 – 11:30 Tour through the Fraunhofer IPA robotics section
12:00 Farewell

With kind support of:
JST ASPIRE “Establishing an international collaborative research network on human-centered vision and media technologies”