Satoru Isaka, Ph.D.

My research topic is machine autonomy and developmental autonomous behavior (see [1] for an outline of my research). For the past decade, I've been exploring the principles and mechanisms that enable machines to acquire new skills autonomously without human intervention. See [2]-[6] for my peer-reviewed publications on this work.

Unlike artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics, which predominantly focus on understanding human cognition and replicating human capabilities, my research is dedicated to examining autonomy from the machine's own perspective. The goal is not to mirror human cognition but to uncover the fundamental systems and processes that govern autonomous machine behavior.

This topic has a significant societal impact but is underappreciated. After three decades of solving real-world problems in the automation industry, I've been concerned with the fundamental issues in integrating autonomy into automation, which are related but distinct concepts. Granting autonomy to machines is a choice by humans, yet its implications are far more profound than most realize.

To articulate and address the issues more directly, I am currently expanding my work to construct a more comprehensive framework of machine autonomy, for example, see [7]. In particular, I'm interested in an epistemic framework that captures embodied and ephemeral experience in a non-human context.

Publications on machine autonomy

[1] S. Isaka, "Research Outline: Machine Autonomy and Developmental Autonomous Behavior," Internal report, August 7, 2025

Older version in public domain: doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20288.24325

[2] S. Isaka, "Taxonomic Robot Identifiers: Toward General Classification and Oversight for Autonomous Systems," in IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 101801-101816, 2025, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3578870

[3] S. Isaka, "A Taxonomic Classification and Identification System for Robots: Abstract," in Proc. 2024 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), Kuching, Malaysia, 2024, pp. 3799-3800, doi: 10.1109/SMC54092.2024.10831650

[4] S. Isaka, "Autonomy in Cognitive Development of Robots: Embracing Emergent and Predefined Knowledge and Behavior," in Proc. 2024 IEEE 20th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), Bari, Italy, 2024, pp. 1353-1360, doi: 10.1109/CASE59546.2024.10711540

[5] S. Isaka, "An Ethological Analysis of Developmental Behavior in Machines," in Proc. 2023 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Macau, China, 2023, pp. 79-86, doi: 10.1109/ICDL55364.2023.10364472

[6] S. Isaka, "Developmental Autonomous Behavior: An Ethological Perspective to Understanding Machines," in IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 17375-17423, 2023, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3246840

[7] S. Isaka, "Philosophical Foundations of Machine Autonomy: What It Means To Grant Autonomy To Machines Part 1: Introduction and First Query," Preprint in ResearchGate, May 9, 2025, doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10280.48643

Biography

Satoru Isaka received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in systems science from the University of California, San Diego, in 1984, 1986, and 1989, respectively. His original research focused on adaptive control systems and artificial intelligence. From 1990 to 1998, he was a research scientist at OMRON in factory and healthcare automation. From 1998 to 2004, he served as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Scientist in the fields of service automation, natural language processing, speech automation, and data analysis automation at venture startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2004, he founded Vision Del Mar, LLC. where he continues his research.

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