>HOW THE ROBOT WORKS

Body: Paro is surprisingly heavy, at 51⁄ pounds. “I designed the

2 weight to be like a human baby,” Takanori Shibata explains.

Fur: Petting animals can have a soothing, anxiety-reducing effect, and anyone who meets Paro for the first time will find it difficult to resist stroking its coat. Paro’s fur — antibacterial and soil-resistant — comes in three colours: golden yellow, snowy white, charcoal grey.

Face: Shibata tweaked Paro’s facial dimensions many times, using questionnaires to determine what people found most appealing.

Nose: Paro “sees” with its black button nose, which contains two light sensors that help the robot detect light. When the lights come on, Paro knows it’s time to play; when they go off, Paro knows to go to sleep.

Mouth: Paro’s battery, which lasts for five or six hours, can be recharged with a device shaped like a pacifier. Paro has been programmed with sounds recorded from a real baby harp seal and it “bawls” and coos in response to stimuli.

Ears: Paro’s ears are equipped with microphones and the robot is capable of both speech recognition (it can recognize its name) and sound localization (so Paro knows where to look when spoken to).

Joints: Paro has seven joints that allow it to mimic the basic movements of a seal: it can “crawl,” blink and look right and left. Jennifer Yang