Thinking about having a baby? There might be a number of ways to prepare from taking a parenting class to learning how to change a diaper. However, now, dear speech-heads, you can practice by interacting with Yotaro, a errie luminescent baby robot created by students at University of Tsukuba.
Yotaro does more than just glow; he cries and pours fake baby snot from a tiny implanted tube; responds to touch and can be calmed by a rattle attached to sensors. The creators fused odd somewhat realistic and non-realistic features to create him since Yotaro’s face is a two dimensional projection from a computer program, but his “skin” is silicone warmed up by warm water. (Insert Yikes here).
His movements are also synthesized by motors beneath a baby blanket. You can see more of this bizarre spectacle in the video.
While I admit encountering fake baby robot snot is not on my list of priorities, as far as robots go, this blog has seen a lot weirder.
