Watch: Robot that can feel pain invented by scientists

A future in which androids look and feel so much like humans that they start to believe they are actually alive - as depicted in the film Blade Runner - may soon be reality. Scientists in Japan have invented a robot that can'feel' pain and is programmed to visibly wince when an electric charge is applied to its synthetic skin. The team from Osaka University is hoping that coding pain sensors into machines will help them develop empathy to human suffering, so they can act as more compassionate companions. For lead researcher Prof Minoru Asada, who is also President of the Robotics Society of Japan, the question of whether robots could one day seem human is almost irrelevant. "In Japan we believe all inanimate objects have a soul, so a metal robot is no different from a human in that respect, there are less boundaries between humans and objects," he said.