教員一覧 List of faculty members

MATSUBARA Hitoshi Specially Assigned Professor

MATSUBARA, Hitoshi specially assigned professor

Job introductions

My research focuses on artificial intelligence, aiming to give computers (machines) intelligence, or to use computers (as negative teachers) to explore human knowledge.

Recently, I have proposed a new field called "Game Informatics" (and have even created a research group with this name within the Information Processing Society of Japan), and I hope to contribute to the advancement of information processing using games as a good subject.

While we also offer games like Sokoban, Go, Bridge, and Shogi puzzles, we are currently focusing particularly on Shogi and soccer.

In shogi (Japanese chess), the goal is for a computer to defeat human champions (Meijin/Ryuo) between 2010 and 15, and efforts are being made to develop a computer that thinks about its next move like a strong human player.

To achieve this, we believe it is necessary to thoroughly analyze the process by which humans play shogi, and we have been conducting repeated experiments in which we have subjects wear eye cameras and track their gaze while they are thinking about their next move.

As one of the founding members of RoboCup, a competition where robots play soccer, Soccer has made soccer his own subject of research and is actively working to develop RoboCup in Japan and around the world.

Furthermore, as an application of soccer, I am involved in research activities for RoboCup Rescue, which aims to apply the results of artificial intelligence and robotics to large-scale disaster relief.

Since coming to Hakodate, I have been conducting research focused on tourism. My goal is to make tourism in Hokkaido, including Hakodate, more attractive by using information technology in a broad sense.

Tourism is an extremely important industry for Hakodate and for Hokkaido. I would be happy if I could contribute even a little to the development of tourism.

Recent Books

• Hitoshi Matsubara et al.: Automatic creation of shogi problems using reverse calculation method, Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, vol.13, no.4 (1998)
• Hitoshi Matsubara: Can Astro Boy Become a Reality? Kawade Shobo Shinsha (1999)
• Hitoshi Matsubara et al.: RoboCup Rescue - Aiming to Apply Multi-Agent System Research to Large-Scale Disaster Relief -, Computer Software, vol.17, no.5 (2000)
• Hitoshi Matsubara, Ikuo Takeuchi, and Hiroshi Numata: Informatics of Robots, NTT Publishing (2001)
• Matsubara, Jin (ed.): Progress in Computer Shogi 4, Kyoritsu Shuppan (2002)
• Jin Matsubara (Supervisor): Wakuwaku Robot Classroom, Shueisha (2003)
• Matsubara, Jin et al.: A Cognitive Science Study of Shogi (2) - Consideration of the Next Move Problem -, Transactions of the Information Processing Society of Japan, vol. 45, no. 5 (2004)