Thanks, Scientists, for This Terrifying Smiling Robot Face Made of Living Skin Cells

Not all robot faces are as cute as Wall-E or Baymax. Researchers from the University of Tokyo have shared a look at a humanoid robot face they made from living human skin grown in a lab, and its appearance is half-nightmare, half-bologna slice. But looks aside, the scientists say they hope their research ends up being useful in the cosmetics industry, and as a tool to help train plastic surgeons.

The team, led by Shoji Takeuchi, a pioneer in the field of biohybrid robotics, published their report in Cell Reports Physical Science on Tuesday. The scientists created artificial skin using living cells, basing their inspiration on human-skin ligaments. They added special perforations to a robot face to help the skin take better hold, and give it improved properties and capabilities.

It comes as the robotics industry continues its efforts to expand into everyday life, like robots making food and drinks, Apple robots that roam your home, personal assistant robots selling for $16,000 and the new Boston Dynamics Atlas humanoid robot that can terrifyingly bend its legs entirely backward, with head, knee and hip joints that rotate all the way around. The addition of generative AI to make robots more responsive could also help push robotics into the mainstream.

For this robot’s skin face, there’s a point — beyond horrifying us — to creating a smile in the tissue. By making a relatively flat robotic face seem to smile, then return to a neutral look, scientists are demonstrating that they can make the skin change shape and return to its previous look without constraining the robot.

“During previous research on a finger-shaped robot covered in engineered skin tissue we grew in our lab, I felt the need for better adhesion between the robotic features and the subcutaneous structure of the skin,” Takeuchi said in a statement. “By mimicking human skin-ligament structures and by using specially made V-shaped perforations in solid materials, we found a way to bind skin to complex structures. The natural flexibility of the skin and the strong method of adhesion mean the skin can move with the mechanical components of the robot without tearing or peeling away.”

The living skin can repair itself

The report notes that previous methods to attach skin tissue used mini anchors or hooks, which could cause damage to the skin, and limited the kinds of surfaces the skin could be used upon. Their answer was to employ a special collagen gel for adhesion. That gel is usually tough to manipulate into tiny perforations on the robot form. They used a common technique for plastic adhesion called plasma treatment to coax the collagen into the perforations while also keeping the skin close to the surface.

“Manipulating soft, wet biological tissues during the development process is much harder than people outside the field might think. For instance, if sterility is not maintained, bacteria can enter and the tissue will die,” said Takeuchi. “However, now that we can do this, living skin can bring a range of new abilities to robots.”

A plus for the biological skin is that it can repair minor lacerations as skin does on human beings, while other chemical-based materials require heat or pressure to induce them to repair themselves, Takeuchi said in the report.