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Robot baby

27 Comments

A student plays with a robot baby called Noby at a laboratory at Tokyo University on Tuesday. The robot is 71 centimeters tall and weighs 7.9 kilograms, has two cameras and two microphones on its head and is also equipped with some 600 touch sensors in the artificial skin of his body. Noby is designed to simulate the behavior and development of a 9-month-old infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.

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So many dark comments here.. really what they are doing is teaching the robot to act more human, and the human to accept the robo as a being. The ultimate goal of Nihon robotics has always been to create a robot that can fully interact with people in EVERY aspect of their lives.. oki oki so let the mecha-otaku drool about that thought for a moment.. now clean off your chin and think a bit deeper.. the potential exists for a future that is equally capable of being as dark as Terminators or as bright as Appleseed, or as ambiguous as Star Trek..

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Im sorry, here again. It is a important point. While I can appreciate electricity in all its forms, in the form a blender, washing machine, fridge, tv, computor, I think it has gone a little bit beyond far here about this. While Monkeyz point might seem valid, it would seem to me that by such 'lessons' it would only make the angry person feel like they have a problem more, and those 'teachers' could warm themself with the thought that 'Im right'. Child raising is by two people.

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I can see the use for this. In my high school we had those robot babies for the parenting and child development courses offered. They were those babies that cried and you had to hold a key in their back no matter when or where it happened, or else you failed the "test."

Maybe more young Japanese people need something like that. So that at least when they slam it into a wall because it won't stop crying, it's a really expensive computer they're breaking and not a real child.

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I had a couple of these. When I got back from playing Pachinko; the one in the car didn't work, and the one I left at home no longer worked after it had accidently fell from the sixth storey window to the ground below. They're not as tough as real kids...

Kumibo

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Noby is designed to simulate the behavior and development of a 9-month-old infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.

OK, lemme get this straight.

They don't understand how humans grow up well enough. OK. So they want to study how humans grow up. OK.

So in order to do so, they build a robot and program it to act like a real baby.

Of course, they can only program it to the extent of their current knowledge.

So in order to learn more, they are studying a robot limited by their current knowledge.

Sounds like a bunch of Otaku's cooked up this scheme to get money to play with some big size figurine dolls that move around.

Of course, the real plan is to create a robot breast, so they can further study how this baby doll grows up. And the breast of course, must be attached to an attractive woman.

Long range planners, those Otaku robot geniuses.

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in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.

Uhm, wouldn't it be better to study humans instead of robots to see how 'humans grow up'?

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I think Japanese people can better connect with robots than other humans

damn, it's true! totally agree!!!

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Creepy!!! There is something wrong with his eyes. Maybe in the future he is going to be a mad scientist or something...

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if you want to improve the baby robot, you need study more the human model then

better understand how humans grow up.

Makes sens to me.

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Next you will have these robots in pre-mommy classes. After a couple of months, the teachers will be receiving questions like,

There is something wrong with my baby. It grows!

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Babies are the future of society. If they want to replace babies with robots, why not the adult population too? It is absurd.

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Emphasis should be on encouraging couples to have more children than promoting these 'robots' These robots will never be a solution to the dwindling population anyway. And as some posts above have said. We can only learn about humans from humans and not the other way round.

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The robot baby is actually studying the behaviour of the student, for purposes as yet unknown to us.

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The only use for a robo baby is medical school. When I was doing my first aid training they had us use mechanical babies for CPR.

As Cleo said, study real babies to learn more about human beings. Robots are pale in comparison.

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my2sense as well....breeding of a stoic attitude?

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I bet you it doesnt get splinters in it's feet!

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Does using a robot teach anything? A robot doesn't show pain when you slap it. It doesn't die when you throw it. What a waste of time and money.

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Does it puke if it drinks milk too fast and crap in its nappy too?

Believe me, if your baby craps only in its nappy, you're very lucky. :-)

Robot babies....as one step up from yer typical dolly, ie as a toy for little kids to play with, fine. But 'to better understand how humans grow up'? Wouldn't it be easier and quicker to study human babies for that?

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I think Japanese people can better connect with robots than other humans

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Hmmm... he's kind of cute. I think I'll ask for a tour of the lab. Ops, back on topic, this looks like it may promote herbivorism in men. We already have talking female robots and elder-care robots, now we have kid robots. Who needs to struggle dealing with the real thing. I can have a happy robot family.

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Noby is designed to simulate the behavior and development of a 9-month-old infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.

Does it puke if it drinks milk too fast and crap in its nappy too? Does it throw a tantrum when its hungry? Does it cry out in the middle of the night because the nappy is wet and its hungry (again)?? If not.....what a total waste of time and money. Why the fixation on all things robotic??

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Why?????

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is that a man or woman.... Im serious.

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Almost daily, we read about some young parent killing a child from neglect or abuse. They should be required to take care of one of these for about a year as punishment/ rehabilitation.

If it were me, considering such a creepy doll, I suspect I would choose to do the prison time.

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Noby is designed to simulate the behavior and development of a 9-month-old infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up.

Why not study humans then rather than build a robot like humans to study humans? This story doesn't make any sense.

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This is the second baby robot photo/article JT has posted. You have to wonder what value these robots have and what can be learned. Can they actually simulate the real thing?

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Noby is designed to simulate the behavior and development of a 9-month-old infant in an effort to better understand how humans grow up

OK???...my 9-month-old wouldnt stay on my lap he be climbing on and up everything!

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