while most people have heard of small baby-simulator dolls used to teach people about childcare,
they probably haven’t heard of yotaro, a robotic baby simulator with and interactive screen for a face.
this strange creation is the result of research at the university of tsukuba in japan, lead by hiroki
kunimura. yotaro is an interactive robot that portrays a variety of facial expressions, movements and
physiological characteristics all natural to babies. the device reacts to the user through a sophisticated
emotion-control system that watches and senses what they are doing and provides an accompanying
reaction. that baby can do a variety of things that make it much more sophisticated than the standard
baby training dolls, like crying real tears on its 2-d face. for this, its unusual form factor and anime-like
face, the yotaro still requires a bit of imagination to see it as a real baby.

http://www.kansei.tsukuba.ac.jp/~uchiyamalab/yotaro