Baby Bots on the rise in Japan

The baby bots name is yotaro and he was made to help encourage people to reproduce more children and, help the declining population in Japan. Yotaro cries, laughs and kicks when you tickle him. He sneezes and his nose runs. When he Is upset his rattles calms him down.


The inventors hopes that Yotaro can help Japan's fallen birth rate, which is at it's lowest in the world.

“A robot can't be human but it's great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby,” said Hiroki Kunimura, the project leader for the Yotaro robot.

Kunimura and his university of Tsukuba team originally built the robotic baby because they wanted to create a robot that can cross national and cultural lines. Since a baby doesn't have any language skills yet, they chose to build as robotic infant.

The university of Tsukuba students began showing off Yotaro at robot competitions, and were surprised by the reactions from the public and the media. “People asked us if this baby robot was created to tackle the low birth rate in Japan,” said Kunimura, who described himself as Yotaro's daddy.

The low birth rate wasn't the initial concept,but when Kunimura started seeing how the public touched and reacted to Yotaro, he saw the possibilities of a robotic solution to a social crisis.



Click link to watch video: 
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2010/06/23/lah.japan.baby.robot.cnn