The Fashion Robot

The girlie-faced humanoid with slightly oversized eyes, a tiny nose and shoulder-length hair boasts 42 motion motors programmed to mimic the movements of flesh-and-blood fashion models.

The fashion-bot is 158 centimetres (five foot two inches) tall, the average height of young Japanese women, but weighs in at a waif-like 43 kilograms (95 pounds) — including batteries.

Hamming it up before photographers and television crews, the seductive cyborg struck poses, flashed smiles and pouted sulkily according to commands transmitted wirelessly from journalists via bluetooth devices.

Modeling a wedding dress by designer Yumi Katsura on its black-and-silver frame. The $2 million HRP-4C, which is equipped with doelike eyes and shoulder-length hair, as well as sound-recognition sensors and motors in her face to mimic human expressions. But with the HRP-4C’s unusually long arms, rigid gait and expected price of about $200,000, flesh-and-blood models needn’t worry about losing their jobs to futuristic fashionistas quite yet.