- The robot’s face is covered with skin that grew from a cell sample in the lab
- READ MORE: Watch a creepy humanoid robot mimic facial expressions
In sci-fi movies like Alien, humanoid robots are so lifelike that they are almost impossible to tell from a real person.
Now, scientists in Japan are on their way to creating actual versions of these realistic machines.
Experts from the University of Tokyo have created a robotic face from human skin grown in a laboratory.
The creepy video shows the bizarre pink creation attempting a cheesy smile.
According to the researchers, robots with real skin not only have an “increasingly lifelike appearance”, but can heal themselves if damaged.
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The research was led by Professor Shoji Takeuchi of the University of Tokyo and detailed in a new study in Cell Reports Physical Science.
Professor Takeuchi’s lab has already created mini robots that walk using biological muscle tissue, 3D printed lab-grown flesh and engineered skin that can heal.
“We were able to replicate the human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans,” Professor Takeuchi said.
“Engineered skin tissue” is made by taking a sample of human skin cells and growing them in a lab – similar to how cultured meat is developed.
Study co-author Michio Kawai from Harvard University told MailOnline: ‘These human skin cells are mainly harvested from excess skin obtained during surgery.
“The cultured skin has the same composition as human skin and is also used as a graft material for people with severe burns or injuries.”
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While creating living skin from cell cultures has its own challenges, the hardest part was getting the skin to adhere to a robotic face made of acrylic resin.
Previous methods included mini anchors or hooks, but these limited the types of surfaces that could receive skin coatings and cause damage during movement.
Instead, the team used a special collagen gel for adhesion and created special perforations in their robotic face, helping the layer of lab-grown skin to hold.
By carefully creating small perforations, skin can be applied to essentially any surface shape, they say.
Although talking humanoids that look just like us are still a long way off, Professor Takeuchi and colleagues believe that living skin can bring a range of new capabilities to robots.
The skin-on-face robots boast self-healing capabilities, built-in sensing capabilities and an “increasingly lifelike appearance.”
“This research introduces an approach to adhere and actuate skin equivalents with perforation-type anchors, potentially contributing to advances in biohybrid robotics,” they say in their paper.
“Unlike other self-healing materials that require heat or pressure to trigger adhesion on cut surfaces, the skin equivalent can regenerate defects by cell proliferation without any triggers.”
Another challenge will be to create a range of human expressions by integrating sophisticated muscle-like actuators inside the robot.