Most of us haven’t grown up to find our own action figure on the shelves of Wal-mart, but MechRC and ThatsMyFace have teamed up to offer you a consolation prize.

Yes, it’s a robot with your face on it.

For about $US850, this miniature you can be yours. That price might sound like a lot until you realise that this you is way better than the real you. It’s programmable, dances better, and happens to be constructed of a little substance we like to call metal.

Oh…we didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! Your skin is wonderfully supple. It just won’t do much to protect your internal organs in a laser fight. [ThatsMyFace and MechRC via Botropolis]

After his debut, Daito Manabe decided it was time to torture four of his friends by connecting them to his Face Visualiser—a player which stimulates facial muscles using electrodes. The resulting video is funny.

The first video was good, but this one is even better, specially their reaction at the end. Clockwise, these four guys are Muryo Honma, Setsuya Kurotaki, Motoi Ishibashi and Seiichi Saito, and they all probably hate—in a good way—their friend Daito for making them look like hyperactive anime characters.

As you can see, the faces are perfectly choreographed thanks to the electrodes stimulating their faces, following the sound beats. [Pink Tentacle]

Inventor Kazuhiro Taniguchi is pretty stoked about the technology, but seems unable to come up with applications that aren’t completely hilarious. For example, he tells Physorg:

You will be able to turn on room lights or swing your washing machine into action with a quick twitch of your mouth… An iPod can start or stop music when the wearer sticks his tongue out, like in the famous Einstein picture. If he opens his eyes wide, the machine skips to the next tune. A wink with the right eye makes it go back.

In other words, skipping more than a track or two will be hard, unless you have epilepsy. Anyway, Apple, please keep me entertained on the bus for the next five years—include this as standard with all iPods, stat. [Physorg]

Just like MyHeritage—a celebrity facial recognition Web site—Face Double is a free iPhone application that will be able to determine which celebrities you look like simply by analysing a photo you’ve taken with your phone. I personally like to think I look like Angelina Jolie, but I’m sure Face Double will tell me I’m more of a mixture between Mulan and Dora the Explorer. (Oh wait, I was wrong; apparently, I’m Ashley Tisdale). Hmm… [Face Double via GeekSugar]

“Researchers rarely shower!” Scary stuff indeed. Let’s hope that the ‘bots get better at smiling before we start incorporating them into healthcare or childcare environments, eh? [NewScientist]

[MAKE]