It giggles and wiggles its feet when you shake its rattle, but will get cranky and cry from too much tickling: Meet Yotaro, a Japanese robot programmed to be as fickle as a real baby.

当你摇动它身体上的拨浪鼓时，它会扭动小脚丫，发出咯咯的笑声，但如果不停地挠它痒痒，它就会发脾气哭闹——这就是“阳太郎”，日本发明的一款会像真正的婴儿那样喜怒无常的机器人。

An engineering student soothes Yotaro, a robot which emulates a real baby at Tsukuba University in Japan. Yotaro's face, made of soft translucent silicon with a rosy hue, is backlit by a projector connected to a computer to simulate crying, sneezing, sleeping and smiling, while a speaker can let out bursts of baby giggles.

The cuddly（令人想拥抱的） baby-bot looks unearthly（神秘的，怪异的） with a pair of luminous（发光的，明亮的） blue eyes and oversized（过大的，极大的） cheeks, but engineering students are hoping it will teach young people the pleasures of parenting as Japan faces a demographic（人口学的） crisis.

"Yotaro is a robot with which you can experience physical contact just like with a real baby and reproduce the same feelings," said Hiroki Kunimura of Tsukuba（筑波） University's robotics and behavioral sciences lab north of Tokyo.

Yotaro's face, made of soft translucent（半透明的） silicon with a rosy（蔷薇色的，玫瑰红） hue（色彩，色度） , is backlit（背光式） by a projector（放映机，投影仪） connected to a computer to simulate crying, sneezing, sleeping and smiling, while a speaker can let out bursts of baby giggles（咯咯的笑） .

The baby changes its facial expressions and moves its arms and legs when different parts of its face and body are touched. Physical contact is detected by sensors, and Yotaro's mood changes based on the frequency of touches.

Yotaro also simulates a runny nose（流鼻涕） , with the help of a water pump that releases body-temperature droplets（飞沫，液滴） of water through the nostrils（鼻孔） .

While the baby robot has a balloon-sized head and exaggerated facial features, its inventors nonetheless（尽管如此，但是） hope "Yotaro could help young parents to learn about raising a baby," said research team member Masatada Muramoto.

"We came up with the idea of a baby robot because we wanted to reproduce a human being's warmth and skin colour," said Kunimura.

"We decided on an infant that has not yet learnt to talk because the feelings generated towards a newborn will be the same for everyone, and because interaction is less complicated than if we had made it talk."

Japan is already famous for highly sophisticated robots, from Honda's humanoid（像人的） Asimo to pancake-flipping chef Motoman to Paro the fluffy robot seal that helps ease loneliness among the elderly.

Hundreds of thousands of industrial robots toil（苦工） in factories, while robo-receptionists（前台接待员） can serve tea, greet guests or vacuum corridors（廊道，走廊） .