Children’s Day for Visiting Kasumigaseki 2026

On July 29 and 30, 2026, OIST joined the Cabinet Office’s “Children’s Day for Visiting Kasumigaseki 2026” in Tokyo for two days of hands-on science outreach. Around 90 children and their families took part in the event.

Takahito Fujimori from OIST’s Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit led a workshop titled “Let's Explore the Minds of Robots.” The workshop invited participants to explore how robots learn—and to think about what it means to have a “mind.”

After an introduction to the idea of an “equation of the mind,” participants got hands-on with robots, using controllers to teach them different movements and observing how they learned from what they had been taught.

As they watched the robots move and learn, participants were encouraged to consider some big questions: Can a robot have a “mind”? And what do we really mean when we talk about the human “mind”? The workshop gave participants an opportunity to explore these questions for themselves through both hands-on activities and scientific thinking.

We hope the experience sparked their curiosity and inspired them to explore robotics and the wider world of science.

Thank you to everyone who joined us!