Toy Robot Intended to Save Humans From Evil, Future Bots

Still, Zeno is clearly a work in progress, prone to hip problems, battery issues or overly long diatribes about the singularity, when a wink or smile would be more charming.

Zeno already does "know" people, and in his mind, has a knowledge container that stores a photo of the person and details about that person. The next step is getting Zeno to start making theories about the world, discarding the dumb ones and amplifying the plausible ones.

That, according to Hanson, is the essence of intelligence, and once a robot can combine that ability with the knowledge available on the internet, superintelligence won't be far off.

Hanson Robotics hopes to begin selling a mass market version of Zeno for about $300 starting sometime in 2010.