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A robot has been built at Cambridge University that can mimic the facial expressions of human beings.

Charles the robot is part of research being done at the Department of Computer Science and Technology to apply human body language to machines to see if people are able to engage with them more.

He works via a complicated system of computer programmes and mechanical servos connected to a camera. Essentially, the camera records the face of the human subject.

This footage is sent to the computer which analyses the positions of various facial aspects (eyebrows, jaw, mouth, etc) before sending this information to Charles. Charles is able to imitate this information through the use of various servos which replicate human facial muscles.

This process takes only 2-3 seconds.

Professor Peter Robinson said Charles was born out of research into emotionally intelligent interfaces.

He said: "We've been interested in seeing if we can give computers the ability to understand social signals, to understand facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture and gesture.

"We thought it would also be interesting to see if the computer system, the machine, could actually exhibit those same characteristics , and see if people engage with it more because it is showing the sort of responses in it's facial expressions that a person would show. So we had Charles made."

However, despite best efforts to get the robot to smile or frown like a human, Charles does look quite strange in action.

"Charles is remarkably realistic, the prosthetics are very good, but the motors are just not like human muscles," Prof Robinson said.

"Our control programmes are just not quite fine enough and the monitoring of the human face we're using at the moment is just not quite good enough and so it looks unnatural."

"Most people when they see this find it slightly strange and that's actually an indication that people are very good at seeing something wrong in somebody else's facial expression. It could be a sign that they're ill or something else."

Despite this setback, Charles has been able to find his place in another area.

"People are absolutely fascinated by robots. Put a robot on display at an open day people will crowd round and flock to see it."

Inevitably, whenever Charles is wheeled out for these demonstrations, the same question gets asked. Are robots going to take over the world?

"The answer is no. You just pull the plug out," Prof Robinson says.

"The more interesting question that this work has promoted is the social and theological understanding of robots that people have. Why do, when we talk of robots, always think about things that look like humans, rather than abstract machines, and why are they usually malicious?

"That tells us something about people more than it tells us about the technology of the machine."