Baby Robot Simulates Real Infant Behavior
Japanese researchers have developed a baby robot created to simulate the behavior and development of a real infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.
Noby, short for "nine-month-old baby", has 600 sensors across its body to feel touch, as well as cameras and microphones fitted into its head for vision and hearing.
Noby stands 28 inches tall and weighs 17 pounds, similar to a nine-month-old human. The baby has soft urethane skin, is flexible and has joints that move like those of a human baby.
Tokyo University professor Yasuo Kuniyoshi, who led development of Noby with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, said researchers are using it to test theories of human development.
"You can load your software into the robot, watch how it reacts to human actions and its surroundings, and compare it with the behavior of real children," Kuniyoshi told AFP on Tuesday.
He said researchers could modify their software if the robot acted strangely in order to fine-tune its development.
Noby is part of a group of humanoids being developed under a broader project headed by Minoru Asada, a robotics-engineering professor at Osaka University, and funded by the government-backed Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
JST said in a statement that the team is adopting a new approach to getting it know humans by replicating them.
It said, "Human beings learn and develop various functions in the process of growing up, but the exact mechanism is yet to be explained."
Shedding light on the field would help develop robots that could live together with humans in the future, according to the agency.
The project team has also unveiled a humanoid the size of a five-year-old, the M3-Kindy, which can walk hand-in-hand with a human.
Noby and M3-Kindy are the latest additions to humanoids created in the project. M3-Neony is also included, which mimics a newborn baby and will be unveiled earlier this year.
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