Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Yotaro cries, giggles, and kicks when you tickle him. He sneezes and his nose runs. When he is upset, his rattle calms him down.

An average baby -- sort of -- since Yotaro is a robot. His inventors hope he will help Japan's sagging birth rate, among the lowest in the world.

"A robot can't be human but it's great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby," said Hiroki Kunimura, the project leader for the Yotaro robot.

Kunimura and his University of Tsukuba team originally built Yotaro because they wanted to create a robot that would appeal across national and cultural lines. Since a baby doesn't have any language skills yet, they chose to build a robotic infant.

The University of Tsukuba students then started showing off Yotaro at robot competitions, and were surprised by the reactions from the public and the media.

"People asked us if this baby robot was created to tackle the low birth rate in Japan," said Kunimura, who describes himself as Yotaro's "daddy."

The low birth rate wasn't the initial concept, but when Kunimura started seeing how the public touched and reacted to Yotaro, he saw the possibility of a robotic solution to a social crisis.

Yotaro, in Japan's high-tech robotics world, is extraordinarily low-tech. The emotions are pre-set in a computer program and shot onto his eerily large head with a projector. Yotaro's warm body temperature is silicone warmed by water. His endlessly runny nose is a water hose on a slow drip. But the effect Yotaro has on people, said his inventors, is stunningly human.

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