According to a recent news report, a group of scientists in Japan has invented a robot that acts like a toddler in his terrible 2's, suggesting that Japanese scientists have completely run out of worthwhile things to do.

Do we not already have enough children screaming "No!" and throwing food on our new clothes? Why did they build the thing? Were they trying to top Godzilla? (The robot is huge, a toddler weighing 73 pounds and standing 4 feet tall - maybe it will grow up to be Godzilla.)

Actually, the scientists said they produced the artificial 2-year-old to conduct research into some unanswered questions, such as how their parents let them make it to age 3. To make the child "realistic," they've built in an ability to wobble as though it is learning to walk - though nothing was mentioned about programming it to wobble over and throw your tax returns into the toilet.

By observing the robot's behavior, they hope to reach conclusions such as "taking your children on an airplane is easy; all you have to do is turn off their power!" They weren't able to program it to lie on the floor and kick and yell, though, so what do they expect to learn?

The scientists say they plan to study how children grow and develop - except, of course, that it's a robot and therefore can't grow and develop. I suppose this means that they will have to build other robots to study other stages of life that for some reason you can't learn about by studying humans.

Here's my suggestion for a Teenage Boy Robot: Make a man-size robot and spray it from head to toe in "body spray," which is what boys use instead of deodorant or baths. Put it in bed on a Saturday morning and watch as it lies there motionless until late Saturday afternoon. Yell at it to wake up, and note that it doesn't appear to move, hear you or breathe. Repeat for 160 Saturdays in a row, then write a check for $20,000 and send it to college.

A Teenage Girl Robot is even easier: Just take the Terrible 2's Robot and make it larger and more expensive. Then teach it to crash your car. To get the most out of the experience, take your telephone off the hook and leave it that way.

How about a Stupid Boss Robot? It could come by every hour or so and tell you how to do your job, only tell you wrong. Once a week it would hold a meeting where it would talk about itself and what a great job it was doing, forgetting to give you credit - though if something had gone badly, it would remember to blame you. If we had a Stupid Boss Robot, we could study what would happen if you threw it off a highway overpass.

The Japanese scientists might also consider creating a drone-like Presidential Candidate Robot, although after watching the last debates I suspect we have enough of those already. But it would be fun to manufacture one that makes speeches to empty rooms and wastes millions of dollars on TV ads (the Third-Party Candidate Robot).

Since it proved so difficult to program the Terrible 2's Robot to throw tantrums, what if we save money and make one that doesn't do anything but stand around modeling really nice clothing? Oh wait, that's silly, we already have one. We call it "Paris Hilton."

Then there's the Cable-TV Installer Robot, which could be programmed to come over at a specific time and then not show up for three days. This robot would be very practical, because with a change of outfits it could also be the Telephone Robot, the Appliance Repair Robot and the Furniture Delivery Robot.

If the Japanese scientists keep building these robots, pretty soon we'll be able to study the entire human race without using any humans! Or maybe we'd be better off if we just developed a Japanese Scientist Robot, so that we could study why someone paid them to come up with the Terrible 2's Robot in the first place.

Write to Bruce at bruce@wbrucecameron.com.