The humanoid HOAP-2 robot can look at your face and draw a portrait. The process is interactive, using speech recognition and synthesis.

A little while back we learned that HOAP-3 can make an omelet, but this seems quite useful and entertaining as well. The robot takes a snapshot of the face, then draws the rough outlines, returning to fill in more and more details as he continues. He processes the data and is able to decide which bits are important and should be drawn and which are distractors. You can read a full description of how this works at the project site.

You can see this guy in action by watching this video. Why he's using an anachronistic quill pen, I do not know. It adds a bit of panache and glamour, I suppose. Or perhaps it's to show off the fact that he can refill it in an ink pot. Ooh, advanced!

He even signs his work- what a classy dude. I bet he could get lots of lady robots with these tactics, a la Leo in Titanic. Chicks totally fall for that stuff.