A Japanese professor has invented what he says is the world's most advanced android. Could it replace humans in the workplace?

In the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day, actor Edward Furlong pokes the face of Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg to check for the hyper-alloy machine beneath that fleshy exterior. Most people find themselves doing the same to Geminoid HI-1, dubbed the world's most advanced android. The imposition brings a swift rebuke: "Please don't touch me," he pleads. "It feels strange."

First meetings with Japanese scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro's Doppelgänger can be unsettling.

The android has the same gimlet-eyed stare and shock of unruly black hair as its master, and an expression poised halfway between irritated and quizzical. When listening to a question, he unnervingly tips his head sideways and narrows his eyes before answering in the voice of the proverbial distracted academic.

The human-like responses are the product of dozens of small pressurised actuators buried beneath his silicone skin, and the voice is Prof Ishiguro's. But visitors to Geminoid's home, a research institute in the government-funded ATR Laboratories outside Kyoto, sometimes believe at first that they're meeting the professor, instead of his robot twin.

Even after it becomes clear that they've been hoodwinked by a $300,000 (€220,636) metal-and-polyurethane look-alike, Ishiguro says people are comfortable talking to his creation. "I have very natural meetings with students using this robot," he explains. "Initially some people find him a bit strange but soon they adapt and treat him quite naturally."

One day soon, he hopes the robot, which is equipped with cameras and remotely operated over the internet, will be able to stand in for busy teachers. "When I get old, maybe I'll put him in a classroom. Especially in Japan; students never ask questions and the department never checks whether I'm around," he says laughing. "I think it is very feasible."

Ishiguro divides his working week between ATR and Osaka University, where he teaches computer science and pattern recognition, and spends lunch-breaks discussing philosophical issues with his students.

"'What is the difference between you and a cockroach,' I ask them. I'm more interested in humans than machines. What does it mean to be human? How do we define it? What is its essence?"

Those questions go to the core of the 42-year-old professor's research: the blurring of the boundary between man and machine. It will be some time, he believes, before Terminator-style robots can pass themselves off as people, but the line is already blurring rapidly. "We can replace many parts of the body with machines and imprint human-like brains into computers. In the near future it will be possible to create technology which will make it impossible to distinguish between us."

As evidence, he cites how much our world is already mediated by technologies such as CCTV, mobile phones and the internet, and says it wouldn't be that hard to pass off a robot as a human on TV. "The most important thing is appearance and behaviour. Look at some movie stars and pop stars; they don't quite look human," he says, laughing again. "They look like androids with their flawless skin; Michael Jackson, for instance."

But why bother developing machines that look like Michael Jackson? Ishiguro believes they will be increasingly useful as interfaces. "Our brain is designed to recognise humans, not computers. A robot is a medium, an interface. If a robot is charged with a simple task, it doesn't need this kind of complicated appearance. Vacuum cleaners and microwaves don't need these complicated bodies. But if we consider robots an interface for communication, the appearance becomes important, because our brain is designed to recognise humans, not computers.

"Children and old people can't use cell phones and computers but they can talk to this robot, so I think androids will be an ideal communication tool."

Some businesses apparently agree. Kokoro, a Tokyo robotics firm he collaborates with, has been inundated with demands for robot reception staff and museum guides, after he made an almost exact replica of a famous Japanese newscaster, Ayako Fujii, down to the flawless skin, fluttering eyelids and glossy lips. Some people said his creation, Repliee, looked even better than the real thing.

Meanwhile, an international bank (he declines to say which) has asked the firm to produce 200 robots to work as tellers in war zones. "In Afghanistan they have US [and] British banks but they cannot hire good people because it is so dangerous. So they want to give high-quality services and their idea is to use androids, operated remotely." He says the order is way beyond what the company can currently produce.

Ishiguro has no problem accepting such commercial work but he balks at two of the most obvious applications for his creations: sex and war. He says he disliked both I, Robot, which he calls "violent", and the Steven Spielberg movie Artificial Intelligence: AI, because of Gigolo Joe, the "sexbot" played by Jude Law. "It is very clear that if we have this kind of technology someone will start a sex business. But I don't like to stress that kind of aspect. I hate that kind of reputation attached to robots."

Although he has "seriously thought" of applying for US universities, military research scares him away. "Everything [there] is related to military applications and I don't want to contribute to that," he explains. Japanese universities are constrained from developing weapons by the country's constitutional ban on the use of military force.

"If I got some sort of patent from a military technology, I would come under pressure from other professors to leave."

Ishiguro's favourite fictional robot is Andrew Martin in Bicentennial Man, played by Robin Williams. "He wants to become human. It is quite a deep movie." But he says Terminator 2 is the most realistic in its portrayal of a world where machines become too powerful and elbow humans aside. "This phenomenon is happening now. The e-mail system controls my activities. If I don't read e-mail for a while, I have a very serious problem. Or if someone spreads something about me on the internet, I can't stop it.

"In movies, robots physically hurt or kill people. In our society, the internet and information technology virtually hurts or kills people. We're living in the future now."

Ishiguro says that his home country is more culturally disposed to the idea of interacting with robots. "In Japan, we like robots but abroad they seem to have some sort of resistance to them, perhaps because of the Christian background. Honda said that children's reaction to [its robot] Asimov is identical, but adults are very different: Japanese adults immediately touch, but European and American adults hesitate."