Bolted onto a two-wheeled trolley, with a tiny square head, pink shoulder pads and outsize metal claws, Hadaly-2 doesn't look much like a human being. But behavior is another story: Shine a light in this robot's eyes and it will squint, blink and turn away in a strikingly humanlike manner. Created at Tokyo's Waseda University, Hadaly-2 is among the latest manifestations of Japan's unique obsession with friendly humanoid robots.

Although Japanese technical leadership in the area of mechanical folk dates to the 1970s, "there's been a big burst of energy during the last three years," according to Rodney Brooks, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.