New Tokyo museum robot guides look, sound human

TOKYO — The new robot guides at a Tokyo museum look so eerily human and are so perfectly smooth in speech they almost outdo people.

The latest creations from Japanese android expert Hiroshi Ishiguro are a female-announcer robot called Otonaroid, a girl robot called Kodomoroid and Telenoid, a hairless mannequin head with pointed arms that serves as a cuddly companion.

The robots with silicon skin and artificial muscles were shown to reporters at Miraikan museum on Tuesday.

National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation Miraikan Chief Executive Director Mamoru Mohri hands a female-announcer robot called Otonaroid a letter of appointment to work as a guide at the museum a girl robot called Kodomoroid, second left, looks on during a press event in Tokyo Tuesday, June 24, 2014. AP/Shizuo Kambayashi

In a demonstration, the remote-controlled machines moved their pink lips in time to a voice-over, twitched their eyebrows, blinked and swayed their heads from side to side, although there were some glitches.

Kodomoroid read the news without stumbling once and regurgitated complex tongue-twisters glibly. Ishiguro said technological innovations made the smaller child-size robot possible.