Japanese boffins have developed a robot which slowly develops social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions.

The robot which looks like a anaemic child dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room. Osaka University professor Minoru Asada said that human babies have limited software programs but have room to learn new routines. What he wants to do is try to get the android to think like a baby who evaluates its mother's countless facial expressions and "clusters" them into basic categories, such as happiness and sadness.

The robot has 197 film-like pressure sensors under its light grey rubbery skin, CB2 can also recognise human touch, such as stroking of its head. It can record emotional expressions using eye-cameras, then memorise and match them with physical sensations, and cluster them on its circuit boards.

It has taken the baby two years to teach itself how to walk with the aid of a human and can now move its body through a room quite smoothly, using 51 "muscles" driven by air pressure. The boffins next goal is to have the robot talking in basic sentences.