Meet the world's first robot with a goatee

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - A Danish scholar now has his own robotic clone after working with Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International.

The Geminoid-DK, made to look just like Aalborg University Associate Professor Henrik Scharfe, is the third Geminoid made -- and the first of its kind outside of Japan. A website dedicated to the project states that it is an android designed to look exactly like its master.

It is a simpler but more lifelike and more affordable version of the original Geminoid HI-1 built by ATR's Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and the Tokyo-based firm Kokoro. The first Geminoid to be made based on a non-Japanese person, it captures Scharfe's appearance right down to his goatee.

Geminoids, as described by tech blog CNET , are remote-controlled slave robots that mimic their users' facial expressions, lip movements and body motions. They do that through motion-tracking gear and an Internet link.

The IEEE Spectrum blog Automaton stated Scharfe will use the android to study "emotional affordances" in human-robot interaction and cultural differences on how people perceive robots. He will work with it at ATR, then ship it back to his lab in Denmark where he will continue to study android science and philosophy.

FOX News said Ishiguro based the first Geminoid on himself. A second, Geminoid F, was a copy of a Japanese model.

Media outlets agree the latest creation is quite life-like, though a bit freaky-looking.

"The final result is a robot with facial expressions so real it's downright scary," FOX News said.

CNET describes its "evil sideways glance."

What does Scharfe's wife think? Spectrum reported that she likes the original, but thinks body No. 2 could be sent to conferences.