The Mertz active vision head robot is pretty creepy when you think about it, as it does remind us of I, Robot in many ways. The brainchild of Lijin Aryananda and Jeff Weber at the MIT Media Lab, Mertz was built to recognize and react to faces and expressions, aiming to research socially situated learning which is similar to an infant’s learning process. It is hoped that when placed around people and absorbing information round the clock, it would be able to “learn” dynamically so to speak, recognize specific individuals and even repeat common words or phrases. Mertz is equipped with 13 degrees of freedom, individually actuated eyebrows and lips (hopefully he can pull the many faces of The Rock of WWE fame) and a microphone. Interesting project, don’t you thyink so?