Two days ago, i was playing with my super-pet, wondering if he’d recognise himself in the mirror and would behave funnily like kittens would do. Of course, he didn’t. He just regarded the mirror as an obstacle on his way.

But one day, the AIBO might be able to react like a real baby in front of a mirror. Junichi Takeno and a team at Meiji University in Japan have engineered a robot that can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot’s computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

The technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.

Via the always exciting Raw Feed Discovery.