<p><br /> A Tokyo University team has developed a robot designed to simulate the development and behaviour of a nine-month-old baby in an effort to better understand how humans grow.<br /> </p><p><br /> The robot created by the team led by Professor Yasuo Kuniyoshi has met the media for the first time.<br /> </p><p><br /> Creating a robot which can develop cognition in a way that a human baby does during it's growth process should also help in achieving a society where robots and humans can live side by side, says Professor Kuniyoshi.<br /> </p><p><br /> "Our purpose is to build a system that can learn various behaviours and acquire various functionalities as it explores around the environment and interacting with humans," he said.<br /> </p><p><br /> Noby is a highly accurate model with the sensory and motor functions of a nine-month-old human baby, measuring 71 centimetres in length and weighing 7.9 kilograms.<br /> </p><p><br /> The body is covered in a soft "skin" with 600 tactile sensors. It is flexible and it's joints can move like those of a human baby.<br /> </p><p><br /> Noby also has two cameras for "seeing" and two microphones for "listening to" the external world.<br /> </p><p><br /> The project is also part of attempts to make more human-like robots.<br /> </p><p><br /> Professor Kuniyoshi's team chose a nine-month-old human baby as Noby's model as this is the time of rapid development of movement and cognition functions.<br /> </p><p><br /> Professor Kuniyoshi plans to study the data acquired from the sensors and cameras attached to the robot to find out how a baby reacts to the environment and the process by which it develops curiosity about new objects.<br /> </p><p><br /> Noby is one of the humanoid robots created under a broader project headed by Minoru Asada, robotics engineering professor at Osaka University, and funded by the government-backed Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).<br /> </p>
