Waseda University X NCM | Professor Katsumi Watanabe

When Robots Reveal What We Are: A Conversation with Professor Katsumi Watanabe

Waseda University Professor Katsumi Watanabe on cognitive science, cross-cultural perception, and what human–robot interaction tells us about being human.

What does it mean to be human, and can a robot help us find out? For Professor Katsumi Watanabe, Professor at Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering, this is not a philosophical abstraction but a working research question, pursued through experiments in perception, micro-expression, and the many subtleties of social interaction.

Trained as a psychologist in Japan and as a cognitive scientist in the United States, with experience working in Australia, Professor Watanabe brings a distinctly cross-cultural lens to his work. His laboratory investigates how humans perceive, decide, and connect with one another, and increasingly, with machines.

Central to his research is the idea that our reactions to robots are rarely straightforward. Studies in his lab have examined micro-expressions and unconscious bodily movements, tiny synchronisations between people that generate feelings of intimacy and trust. They have explored whether these same dynamics can be cultivated between humans and robots. His cross-cultural comparisons between Japanese and Australian participants have revealed striking differences in how people project expectations onto machines, differences that carry real implications for how robots are designed, introduced, and received around the world.

Professor Watanabe also speaks to the value of artistic practice in robotics — a perspective with particular resonance for NCM, where both artists he discusses have presented work. Elena Knox, whose video installation Protective Seal is currently on display in FRIEND, conducted the work as a creative researcher with Watanabe Lab at Waseda University, taking the therapeutic seal robot Paro on an unlikely pilgrimage to the Arctic to explore questions of sentience, climate, and human-machine companionship. Mari Velonaki, whose humanoid robot Diamandini visited NCM in 2024 as part of the Robot in Residence program, has explored the boundaries of machine-machine and human-machine interaction through sculpture and sound. For Watanabe, artists like these bring dimensions to robot design that engineering alone tends to overlook.

We spoke with Professor Watanabe about the legacy of WABOT-2, what micro-expressions reveal about trust, the differences between the way Australians and Japanese people treat robots and why he believes that how we relate to robots is, ultimately, a reflection of how we relate to ourselves.

Katsumi Watanabe holds a BA in Experimental Psychology and an MA in Life Sciences — completed with highest honours — from the University of Tokyo, and a PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology, supported by a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in Theoretical Neurobiology. After postdoctoral fellowships at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, he held research positions at the National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology (AIST) and led the Decision Making Research Group within the Shimojo Implicit Brain Function Project at JST's ERATO programme. He served as Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology before joining Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering as a full professor in 2015.

His research spans cognitive science and neuroscience, with particular focus on perception, crossmodal interaction, attention, social cognition, and decision-making. In recent years this has extended to human–robot interaction: how people's behaviour and self-understanding shift through engagement with robots, and what those shifts reveal about the human mind.

His awards include the Commendation for Science and Technology from Japan's Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2020), the Waseda Research Award (2016), and multiple presentation awards from the Japanese Psychological Association and the Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology. He has been recognised as a Waseda Key Researcher and was a finalist in the Annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest.

Tokyo-based film crew

Videographer: Shinya Miyazawa

Production support and translation: Mari Mori

Production coordination: Amanda Lynn Imasaka

Additional b-roll: courtesy of Waseda University

Interview filmed at Waseda University, Tokyo

Melbourne-based film crew

Exhibition b-roll: Dave Meagher

Editor: Dave Meagher

Subtitle/translation support: Chris Poole Translation