This is Affetto, a robotic baby head built by Hisashi Ishihara, Yuichiro Yoshikawa, and Prof. Minoru Asada of Osaka University. Professor Asada built this bodiless baby to observe how humans interact with robotic children, as prior studies using more mechanical babies wigged out would-be caregivers.
Here’s a paper on Asada’s creation of the robot (mostly Japanese PDF, apologies), and check out the interior of Affetto’s noggin. It’s unclear if test participants will warm up to the tot, but let’s just be thankful Affetto wasn’t built to be the size of a house…like some other robotic babies lurking out there. [Via IEEE Spectrum]
