9 Movie Mad Scientists That Might Have Been Onto Something

The Inventor on Edward Scissorhands is just trying to create an automaton that can feel. The trouble with that is that if you then go and die before it's finished, leaving it alone in a spooktacular gothic mansion with scissors for hands, it's probably gonna mess with its poor head a bit.

This is a cautionary tale that we can probably learn from, as we appear to be getting closer and closer to creating robots with feelings in real life.

Pepper, a humanoid robot created by the French firm, Alderbaran, is just such a robot. This adorable automaton wouldn't be much use around the house and it doesn't come with any special vacuum cleaner attachments, but Pepper is an emotional robot.

According to its creators, Pepper will get to know its users over time, growing to understand their emotional needs. You can talk to Pepper and it will understand you beyond simple requests and instructions (apparently) and you will be able to download different personalities from the app store. What's more, each robot will upload everything it has learnt to the cloud, so that all other Pepper bots can learn from it too.

The creators are currently selling Pepper at a loss for a staggeringly low £1,000 each and they roll out 1,000 limited units a month. Plus, Pepper doesn't have scissors for hands, so your soft furnishings are safe.