Japan baby-robot teaches parenting skills

Asian Defense News: TSUKUBA, Japan (AFP) - – 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.

Japan baby-robot teaches parenting skills

The cuddly baby-bot looks unearthly with a pair of luminous blue eyes and oversized cheeks, but engineering students are hoping it will teach young people the pleasures of parenting as Japan faces a demographic 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 University's robotics and behavioral sciences lab north of Tokyo.

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 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, with the help of a water pump that releases body-temperature droplets of water through the nostrils.

While the baby robot has a balloon-sized head and exaggerated facial features, its inventors nonet heless 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 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 in factories, while robo-receptionists can serve tea, greet guests or vacuum corridors. Japan even has a robot supermodel, the HRP-4C.

The pretty humanoid, which boasts 42 motion motors programmed to mimic the movements of flesh-and-blood fashion models, was unveiled last year ahead of Tokyo Fashion Week.

The world last year also got a glimpse of Japan's first child-robot, the CB2, with a so-called "biomimetic" body designed to learn and interact just like a human infant, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.

Elsewhere the University of Osaka last week unveiled a robot that mimics a crawling baby, part of a research project to examine the process by which a human being acquires the skills to move and speak.

The 50-centimetre (20-inch), 3.5-kilogram (7.7-pound) M3-neony has a body similar to that of a newborn. It is equipped with 22 motors, 90 tactile sensors and microphones placed near the eyes and ears.

When ordered to move forward, the baby-bot, lying down, will wave its feet and arms, gradually learning which movements will allow it to push itself up and crawl, said project leader professor Minoru Asada.

Yotaro and M3-neony are part of Japan's push for a robotics revolution as the country seeks solutions to a demographic crisis that threatens to deplete its workforce and the number of carers for the elderly.

Japan has the world's longest average life expectancy -- 79 years for men and 86 years for women -- and one of the lowest birth rates, meaning its population is headed for a steep decline.

The Tsukuba students hope Yotaro may help Japanese want babies to revitalise a country where more than a fifth of the population is aged 65 or older. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 40 percent.

Yotaro may look unusual, with its broad face wrapped in a hoody sporting a pair of teddy-bear ears, but the students think most Japanese will be comfortable with it, thanks to their long exposure to robots in pop culture.

"Japanese have always been comfortable with robots who are not seen as threats but as beings that have the potential to develop friendly relationships," said Muramoto.

Tibet security tight for anniversary: residents

Asian Defense News: BEIJING (AFP) - – China has beefed up security in Tibet's capital as the region marks the sensitive anniversaries of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule and bloody 2008 riots, residents said Wednesday.

Tibet security tight for anniversary: residents

Tibet has been under heavy security since the anti-China riots two years ago, but police patrols and resulting tension have both recently increased in Lhasa, residents told AFP by phone.

"There are patrols outside every day and they have been stepped up," said a staffer at the Jin Cheng International Business Hotel in Lhasa, who gave only her surname Li.

"There are two or three armed police on duty at every intersection."

An uprising against Chinese rule of the Buddhist Himalayan region erupted on March 10, 1959, but was crushed by China within weeks, forcing the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, to flee into exile.

China calls the defeat of the uprising the beginning of Tibet's "democratic reform" away from its "feudal" days, but retains an iron grip in the region.

Protests took place on the uprising's 2008 anniversary, escalating in subsequent days into violent riots across Tibet and neighbouring regions with significant populations of ethnic Tibetans.

China responded with a security clampdown that has been in place ever since.

"It is a little tense. There are a lot of patrols," said a female staff member at the Xue Yu Hotel.

She said both uniformed and plainclothes security were out in force.

Given the tense situation, the hotel had decided to close until March 21, she said.

The Zaxiquta Hotel also had ceased taking bookings until next week due to the tension in the region, a male staffer told AFP.

"We don't have many clients now, only four. But we have more than 70 beds," he said, without giving his name.

He added guests were returning before nightfall but none of the people contacted by AFP reported any government curfew or other security notices being issued.

China on Tuesday accused the Dalai Lama of trying to "create chaos" in Tibet.

"If there were no anti-China forces or no Dalai to destroy and create chaos, Tibet would be better off than it is today," the region's Communist Party secretary Zhang Qingli said on a government website.

China has said 21 people were killed by "rioters" in 2008, while security forces killed only one "insurgent."

But the Tibetan government-in-exile says more than 200 people were killed and 1,000 hurt in the unrest and subsequent crackdown in the remote region.

At least 5,700 people were arrested in connection with the unrest, the government has said, with many Buddhist monks given long prison terms.

China views the Dalai Lama as a separatist and blames him for unrest in Tibet. The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner has denied such accusations, saying he seeks only meaningful autonomy for the region, not independence.

New Caledonia taps Australia for reef protection

Asian Defense News: CANBERRA (AFP) - – New Caledonia on Wednesday enlisted Australia's help to protect its massive coral reef, the world's second biggest after the Great Barrier Reef.

Senior officials said the French Pacific territory hoped to tap Australian research and expertise to maintain the reef, which rings its main island and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

New Caledonia taps Australia for reef protection

"Australia has long-standing experience in the management of the coral reef," High Commissioner (governor) Yves Dassonville told reporters in Canberra during a visit.

"We would like to seize the opportunity of your experience and exchange scientific information on research projects with regard to those two reefs, which are the largest in the world and which are essentially facing each other across the sea."

Dassonville also said New Caledonia hoped to set up joint management of the Australian and French economic zones which extend across the Pacific from the huge reefs on either side.

"It would be useful to establish a joint sustainable and agreed management approach for those two exclusive economic areas beyond the coral reefs," he said.

The initiatives are part of a new push for New Caledonia to integrate more closely with its neighbours, including moves for full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), ahead of an independence referendum.

New Caledonia President Philippe Gomes said Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea all supported the PIF bid by New Caledonia, which is currently an associate member.

The delegation also proposed holding annual meetings with Australia aimed at boosting trade, education and cultural ties, and sharing expertise at fighting bushfires, which plague both sides.

New Caledonia, a former penal colony which was annexed by France in 1853, is increasingly moving towards independence with the referendum on self-rule due between 2014 and 2018.

The islands lie 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) east of Australia and are home to some 227,000 people and about 25 percent of the world's nickel reserves, creating an industry which exports mainly to Japan and South Korea.

The delegation, at the invitation of Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, was the biggest ever sent to Australia by New Caledonia and the first received by the country's prime minister.

Gourmet diners 'may spell extinction' for sea turtle

Asian Defense News: KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - – Malaysians' voracious appetite for turtle eggs could drive the marine creatures to extinction on its shores, conservationists warned on Wednesday.

According to a report by environmental group WWF-Malaysia, hundreds of thousands of turtle eggs are eaten in Malaysia every year, despite campaigns to get them off the menu.

Gourmet diners 'may spell extinction' for sea turtle

"One of the contributing factors to the leatherback turtles' disappearance from our shores is egg consumption," said WWF-Malaysia executive director Dionysius S.K. Sharma.

"We wouldn't want the same thing to happen to our green and hawksbill turtles."

Turtles once arrived in their thousands to lay their eggs on Malaysian beaches, which are collected and sold on markets. But they are now increasingly rare due to poaching and coastal development.

The report, prepared by TRAFFIC Southeast Asia showed that the market demand for turtle eggs exceeded supply.

It estimated that 422,000 eggs were traded in the northeastern state of Terengganu alone in 2007, more than twice the number of green turtle eggs laid in the state, and that eggs were being brought in from outside to meet demand.

Most consumers consider turtle eggs a "delicacy" and eat them for pleasure, not as a source of protein or for reputed medicinal or aphrodisiac effects, the report said.

"A change in attitude and behaviour is needed to turn the tide if we want to ensure the survival of turtles," Sharma said.

Conservationists have urged the government to impose a nationwide ban on the consumption and commercial sale of turtle eggs.

Sharma said that some 10,000 leatherback turtles nested in Terengganu every year in the 1950s but that this had been reduced to just 10 a year at present.