The Waseda Talker talking robot

Researchers from the Takanishi Laboratory at Waseda University in Japan have created an anthropomorphic talking robot, the WT-4, capable of producing Japanese vowels that sound more like human speech than previous robots (and from the looks of those lips, like it's up for a little spin-the-bottle). They say they gave the bot a more human-like appearance to make communication with it easier (hence the anthropomorphic part), although we're not sure how talking to a disjointed mouth and nose stuck on a tin man body makes for a more natural conversation.