The Japanese are famous for their animation and robotics and while I am quite the fan of both, there are those times when they go a bit overboard. In this case it’s a humanoid robot designed to look like a baby. The baby robot Yotaro has been developed by the University of Tsukuba in Japan who clearly have issues with infants. While there’s no denying the technology is brilliant, it’s the looks that could scare the be-jeebers out of you. The humanoid robot employs a touch-sensitive face, artificial tear ducts that disperse warm water tears that flow out and built in speakers for a variety of sounds like crying and laughing. It also has motors that are used to move the robots feet and hands simulating a real infant. It’s supposed to simulate a real child, I’m not sure why they’ve chosen scary ‘Chucky-like’ fetaures though. The whole concept behind designing this robotic baby is a bit vague but it’s possibly to help train to-be parents on how to interact with newborns. Either that or it’s a prop for some horror flick.

[Crunchgear]