World's sexiest robot' causes a frenzy at Beijing tech conference

Hyper-realistic, rubber-skinned android steals the show at Beijing's World Robot Conference

Osaka University's Geminoid F, created to look like an actual woman in her 20s, is said to have been among the most advanced robots at the World Robot Conference in Beijing this week.

Even at an advanced technology conference, movie stars can somehow command the attention of an entire room simply by showing up. Especially when they're also robots.

 The World Robot Conference in Beijing was reportedly taken by storm this week when the latest iteration of Geminoid F – an almost terrifyingly-realistic robot woman – made an appearance during the show.

Known to many as "the world's sexiest robot," the rubber-skinned android can speak, sing, and even act according to China's state-run news service.

She made headlines just a few weeks ago, in fact, when it was announced that she was starring in the Japanese disaster flick Sayonara, making her the first robot to score an actress profile on IMDB.

China.org.cn reports that Geminoid's F, a creation of Osaka University's Ishiguro lab, was designed to look like a woman in her 20s and that her operating system allows her to imitate the motions and facial expressions of real people.

Her silica-gel skin can even age, in a sense.

"The gel will become saggy after one or two years and has to be replaced as a result," said Sun Yuting, a Chinese student working for Ishiguro lab, to a reporter at the conference.

The 5-foot-6 android can also make eye contact with humans, recognize body language, and show off a "toothy smile" according to her creators.

"A Geminoid is an android whose appearance closely resembles a specific human 'model'," reads an English page about the female robot and her male counterpart on Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories' website. "Geminoids' bodies are constructed by precisely measuring human models with a 3D scanner; gypsum is used to accurately capture facial contours."

A page dedicated specifically to the Geminoid F model, written in Japanese, explains that the lab hopes this type of robot becomes more common in "communication media for every day life."

look at those shifty eyes

I don't know how other people feel about this robot but I am finding it a little creepy and also a little frightening; probably the result of too much science fiction. Still, I see the technological singularity peeping around the corner and it looks a lot like this robot. If science perfects these geminoids to the point that we can't tell them from genuine humans, we're in real trouble. I'm going to have nightmares now, of waking in the pre-dawn hours and finding an android staring down at me with that shifty eyed smile.