Google has secured a patent for ‘methods and systems for robot personality development’ drawn from cloud computing capacities.

20th Century Fox's iRobot explores if a robot can kill

The internet giant has outlined a process in which a robot may be programmed to operate according to a specific profile or personality and may have a certain appearance and attributes which are singular to a specific robot, or it could have multiple personalities from which a human could select the setting.

The robot personality may also be modifiable to reflect different states or moods such as happiness, fear, surprise, perplexion, thoughtfulness, and derision. "These moods can again be triggered by cues or circumstances detected by the robot, or elicited on command," the disclosure reads.

"The personality and state may be shared with other robots so as to clone this robot within another device or devices. In this manner, a user may travel to another city, and download within a robot in that city (another 'skin') the personality and state matching the user's 'home location' robot. The robot personality thereby becomes transportable or transferable," it continues.

The robots would also be able converse verbally as well as visual - so facial movements such as twitches.

The details of the patent echo themes from 20th Century Fox's iRobot (pictured above), in which a detective played by Will Smith investigates an alleged suicide of US Robotics founder Alfred Lanning, played by James Cromwell. His chief suspect is a human-like robot (played by Alan Tudyk) and later its evil data is shared to other robots via the cloud.