The Terminator T-800 was a cyborg covered with a layer of living skin tissue in order to blend in with humans. You might be a little surprised -or not- to learn that scientists are working on such a robot in real life. Michio Kawai and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo are experimenting with culturing living human skin cells to cover a robot, to make the robot's face more relatable and allow it to communicate with humans better. Another aim is to cover robots with something that will heal after being damaged.
The video above is from Kawai's latest paper, published today, in which scientists attached the living skin culture to a robotic face made of resin, anchored with perforations, in order to move the skin with actuators and make facial expressions, "potentially contributing to advancements in biohybrid robotics."
While it looks pretty creepy (what are those eyes made of?) and the implications of biohybrid robots can cause nightmares (or movies), attaching living skin to a robot is still in its early stages. Without a blood supply, living skin will not last long on a robot face. I'm sure they're working on that problem, too. -via Laughing Squid