Growing up in a suburb of Tokyo in the 1960s and ’70s, Satoru loved hanging out with friends, playing baseball, and tinkering with electronics. By middle school, he was roaming Akihabara, the famed wholesale electronics district, picking up transistors and components, designing custom circuit boards, and building quirky electromechanical gadgets on weekends. Boys like him were affectionately nicknamed “Radio Boys” in those days.

During middle and high school, he trained in Kendo and earned the rank of Sandan.

After graduating high school, he left Japan to attend college in the U.S. He had his sights set on Ohio State University (OSU), inspired by the Buckeyes football games he watched on TV. But being a confused teenager with a poor attention span and limited English skills, he ended up at a different OSU, Oklahoma State University. Though confused at first, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He spent three wonderful years in Stillwater, Oklahoma, soaking up Midwest culture and enjoying the company of the friendly people of “good old America.”

In the summer of 1980, he took a 1,500-mile road trip to Southern California. When he glimpsed the Pacific Ocean from La Jolla Shores Drive, he was instantly captivated. On the spot, he decided to transfer, despite not knowing which college it was or even its name. It turned out to be a renowned academic institution, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). By the following summer, he had packed up and moved to Pacific Beach, fully immersing himself in the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of Southern California.

Below is a page from his college notebook, describing his invention of a robotic guitar self-tuner. The device automatically rotated the tuning pegs to adjust string frequency. For this, he used the cutting-edge microprocessor at the time, 8-bit M6800.

With generous support and guidance from professors at UCSD, he continued on to graduate school to deepen his study of control systems theory and artificial intelligence. He contributed to a range of research projects, including stroke rehabilitation monitoring, digital seismography, drug infusion systems, and H-infinity algorithms. During his graduate years, he lived in the beach town of Del Mar, just north of campus, where he brewed his own beer under the private label Del Mar Brewery. He completed his Ph.D. in 1989 with a dissertation on adaptive control strategies incorporating artificial intelligence.

In 1990, he accepted a job offer in Cupertino, California, and launched into a fast-paced lifestyle in the heart of Silicon Valley. Over the following decades, he immersed himself in every facet of business and entrepreneurship: from research and product development to project management, intellectual property strategy, product marketing and sales, new business development, media training, public relations, P&L and cash flow management, fundraising, and investment.

From 1995 to 1997, he and his wife lived aboard a 35-foot sailboat in South San Francisco, saving as much money as they could for future travels while having fun cruising the bay. In October 1997, they set off on a year-long backpacking journey through Central and South America, as well as East and Southeast Asia.

After returning in late 1998, he seized several venture startup opportunities, riding the wave of the emerging Internet and mobile computing boom. In the years that followed, he and his wife welcomed three children into the world.

As he neared 50, he suddenly felt inspired to write his own songs. In one summer, he spent his days writing, singing, playing instruments, and recording, all while raising his three children. The result was a music album titled A Teen of the ’70s, a collection of eight songs that capture his thoughts and reflections.

After some time in the business world, his perspective on technology evolved. From then on, he chose to devote his skills and energy to work with deeper meaning. He prioritized time with his three children, and he became an active youth sports coach in baseball, softball, and soccer. Through this, he gained first-hand insight into children's social-emotional well-being, an experience he describes as the most influential of his life. He often reflects, "The best education I received was when I was coaching children in youth sports; they were the teachers, I was their student."

This experience profoundly shaped his understanding of human development and behavior, ultimately inspiring his 2018 book, The Principles of Mental Care.

He also brought together his expertise in systems science and artificial intelligence and his insights from human development and behavior to advance research on machine autonomy and developmental autonomous behavior. His peer-reviewed publication on the subject, Developmental Autonomous Behavior: An Ethological Perspective to Understanding Machines, was published in 2023. The article introduces a theoretical framework for understanding machine autonomy from an ethological perspective, emphasizing the developmental dimensions of autonomous behavior in machines.

In conclusion, his passion for understanding machines is rooted in the visions of his childhood and shaped by his encounters with human emotion and development, especially through the lives of children and people around the world. While academic training helps him articulate, construct, and validate ideas, it is his years in the industrial world that have most deeply grounded his understanding. The gap between theory and practice is vast: knowing how to make ideas work in the real world requires more than conceptual rigor. Like playing a musical instrument or mastering a second language, one must physically engage with the process of embodied learning. Only then can one fully grasp the nature of the human–machine relationship.

In his view, the current confusion and struggles surrounding AI and autonomous machines stem not from technological or regulatory deficits, but from a lack of fundamental understanding of both human and machine nature. The prevailing fascination with superintelligence is, to him, emblematic of our collective misunderstanding. In the end, what he seeks is not to replicate human intelligence, but to reimagine what we create and deepen our understanding of it through the lens of humility.

More personal stuff

Personal creatives

1998 – Conversational Search Engine “Q”

He developed Q, a natural language interface that allowed users to access real-time information, such as weather, news, stock prices, and movie showtimes, simply by typing or speaking. A decade before such services became mainstream, Q anticipated the rise of conversational AI.

2002 – Multi-Modal Customer Insight System

He designed and patented an online information processing system to analyze customer data from phone, text, email, and websites, aiming to improve service quality. As interest in Big Data surged years later, the system’s core functions became increasingly relevant.

2003 – Voice-Based Health Literacy Platform

To address health literacy and accessibility, he built a mobile and voice-driven decision tree system that delivered complex medical information in plain language anytime, anywhere. He founded the nonprofit iTriage.org to offer this service free to Spanish and English speakers.

2015 – Preventive Emotional Health for Children

After years of studying emotion and behavior, he developed and patented a system to support young children’s emotional well-being using systems science principles. The project included a mobile app, educational toys, and a book: The Principles of Mental Care

2017 – Speech Recognition for English Learners

He created a system that helps English learners practice pronunciation through speech recognition and natural language dialogue. More information at ESL by Speech Recognition.

2018 – Voice Decision Trees for Alexa

Building on his 2003 work, he developed voice-based decision trees for Amazon Alexa. With the rise of smart speakers, his early ideas found new relevance in mainstream voice interfaces. More information at Decision via Voice.

Publications

1. 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
2. S. Isaka, “A Taxonomic Classification and Identification System for Robots and Autonomous Systems: Abstract,” presenting at the IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), Kuching, Malaysia, 2024.
3. S. Isaka, “Autonomy in Cognitive Development of Robots: Embracing Emergent and Predefined Knowledge and Behavior,” in Proc. IEEE 20th Int. Conf. on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), Bari, Italy, 2024.
4. S. Isaka, “An Ethological Analysis of Developmental Behavior in Machines," in Proc. 2023 IEEE Int. Conf. on Development and Learning (ICDL), Macau, China, pp. 79-86, 2023.
5. 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.
6. S. Isaka, The Principles of Mental Care, Independent Publishing, 2018.
7. S. Isaka, Practical English Training with Speech Recognition, Independent Publishing, 2018.
8. S. Isaka and H.T. Nguyen. “Information triage for health literacy promotion”, Abstract for the 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition, American Public Health Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2005.
9. S. Isaka, "An empirical study on facial image feature extraction using genetic programming", Late Breaking Papers at the Genetic Programming 1997 Conference, Stanford University, pp.93-99, 1997.
10. S. Isaka and V. Chu, "Industrial fuzzy control review: a perspective from feedback and manufacturing", Industrial applications of fuzzy logic, World Scientific Publishing, 1995.
11. S. Isaka, "Fuzzy logic applications at OMRON", Industrial Fuzzy Control and Intelligent Systems, IEEE Press, 1995.
12. B. Kosko and S. Isaka, "Fuzzy Logic", Scientific American, Vol.269, No.1, pp.76-81, July 1993.
13. S. Isaka and A.V. Sebald, "Control strategies for arterial blood pressure regulation", IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering, pp.353-363, Vol.40, No. 4, April 1993.
14. S. Isaka, "Fuzzy temperature controller and its applications", Proc. SPIE Applications of Fuzzy Logic Technology, pp.59-65, September 1993.
15. Z.Y. Zhao, M. Tomizuka, and S. Isaka, "Fuzzy gain scheduling of PID controllers", IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol.23, No.5, pp.1392-1398, September 1993.
16. K. Mitsubuchi, S. Isaka, and Z.Y. Zhao, "A fuzzy rule generation", Proc. IFSA World Congress '93 Seoul, Korea, pp. 11-14, 1993.
17. S. Isaka, "On neural approximation of fuzzy systems", Proc. IJCNN '92 Baltimore, pp. 263-268, 1992.
18. S. Isaka, "On function approximations by fuzzy and neural systems", Proc. Int'l Symposium on AI in Material Processing, Edmonton, Alberta, 1992. (invited paper)
19. S. Isaka, "On input space clustering by fuzzy systems and neural networks", Proc. IEEE Int'l Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Chicago, 1992. (invited paper)
20. Z.Y. Zhao, M. Tomizuka, and S. Isaka, "Fuzzy gain scheduling of PID controllers", Proc. The First IEEE Conf. on Control Applications, Dayton, pp. 698-703, 1992.
21. S. Isaka and A.V. Sebald, "An optimization approach for fuzzy controller design," Proc. American Control Conference, pp.1485-1490, 1990.
22. S. Isaka, "On the design and architecture of adaptive fuzzy controllers and their application to a biomedical control problem," Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, San Diego, 1989.
23. S. Isaka and A.V. Sebald, "An adaptive fuzzy controller for blood pressure regulation," Proc. IEEE Eleventh Annual EMBS Conf., 1989.
24. A.V. Sebald, M. Quinn, N.T. Smith, A. Karimi, G. Schnurer, and S. Isaka, "Engineering implications of closed-loop control during cardiac surgery," Journal of Clinical Monitoring, 1989.
25. A. Karimi, A.V. Sebald, and S. Isaka, "Use of Simulated Annealing in Design of Very High Dimensioned Minimax Adaptive Controllers," Proc. 23rd. Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems and Computers, 1989.
26. S. Isaka, A.V. Sebald, A. Karimi, N.T. Smith, and M.L. Quinn, "On the design and performance evaluation of adaptive fuzzy controllers," Proc. IEEE 27th Conf. Decision and Control, pp.1068-1069, 1988.
27. S. Isaka, A.V. Sebald, N.T. Smith, and M. Quinn, "A fuzzy blood pressure controller," Proc. IEEE Tenth Annual EMBS Conf., pp.1410-1411, 1988.
28. S. Isaka, A.M. Schneider, P. Filia, K.K. Lue, R.D. Coutts, and V.L. Nickel, "A new tool for stroke rehabilitation study," Proc. 10th Annual Conf. on Rehabilitation Technology, pp.287-289, 1987.

Links

• Satoru Main Page
• Youtube Channel
• A Teen of the 70's (Satoru writes, plays, sings music)
• Satoru's guitar story
• Mood Cow (Satoru's public charity effort on mental wellness)
• iTriage.org (Satoru's public charity effort on digital health)