
French: 
Bonjour Hervé !
Ce que vous avez là est
une sorte de vue d'ensemble
qui donne une idée de
ce que nous sommes en train de préparer.
Voici la grande salle.
Et maintenant nous dérivons vers la plus petite.
Cet espace, juste là,
est destiné aux petits robots
Dont vous m’avez dit
qu’ils étaient très très curieux
Grâce à l'équation de la curiosité.
Les visiteurs peuvent entrer dans cet espace
en étant très discrets
pour découvrir les petits robots,
leur rendre visite.
Il ne faut pas trop de monde à la fois,
Pour ne pas effrayer les petits robots.
Après avoir passé
un moment avec eux, vous pouvez ressortir.

English: 
MATHEMATICS, A BEAUTIFUL ELSEWHERE
This exhibition time is put to good use
by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
and a team of researchers from Inria
and the University of Bordeaux,
to develop the
Ergo-Robots experiment,
in a set design conceived
by the American artist David Lynch.

French: 
Buvez un verre de vin rouge à ma santé,
je vous dis à bientôt.

English: 
CURIOSITY
LANGUAGE
LEARNING
ERGO-ROBOTS

English: 
Can a machine –
can a robot – learn
like a child?
ARTIFICIAL
CURIOSITY
We try to take inspiration
from the living world.
We try to take a number
of principles from it,
which we model
mathematically, formalize,
convert into algorithms,
implement in the robots
and then trial.
Ergo-Robots are
equipped with mechanisms
that model aspects
of learning and curiosity.
ACTION, EFFECT,
PREDICTION
They learn by 
carrying out experiments.
They try out actions.
They observe the effects.
And they try to detect
the patterns
between these actions and these effects.
This enables them to make
predictions.

English: 
Ergo-Robots are programmed
to choose experiments
as part of a deliberate
search for situations
in which they will make
errors in their predictions.
They seek surprise.
That’s why we call this
artificial curiosity.
HOW LANGUAGES
FORM
At the beginning,
they have absolutely
no shared vocabulary.
First, a robot
points to an object
and then it says what
it calls the object.
The other one does the same
and each one updates
its own vocabulary.
Gradually, a new
language will form,
shared by all
members of the group.
The engineer cannot predict
this language in advance.
If we run
another experiment,
with another group of robots,
programmed in the same way,

English: 
using the same bodies,
the new group of robots
will invent a new language.
In the same way
as they explore physical objects
seeking surprise,
they explore how
their vocalizations can provoke
reactions in visitors.
By holding out their hands, visitors
can also trigger sounds
in response.
The robot then compares its prediction
with the visitor's response.
After a while,
a basic communication structure
and imitation games
can develop between the robots
and the visitors.

English: 
Although these societies always
start in exactly the same state,
they never end up
in the same state.
There are regular
structures that recur,
but no two societies of robots
ever end up with the same language,
or with the same
know-how,
or with exactly
the same way of interacting
with visitors.
The Ergo-Robots experiment
is an exploration
of the complexity of mechanisms
of curiosity, of imitation
and of language formation.
Developing robots learning
like children

French: 
Le troisième mystère réside 
dans le rôle du cerveau.
Une masse de matière organique,
qui s’est développée accidentellement 
et apparemment amorphe, est capable,
en suivant des voies dictées 
par la physique,
de sélectionner une réponse adéquate
dans un ensemble doublement exponentiel
de possibilités (peut-être imaginaires ?).

English: 
allows to formulate
this essential question
in a new way:
what is man?
