Facebook plotting ’emotionally sensitive’ robots that explore cities to make new friends for you

FACEBOOK has designed a strange dystopian robot that heads out into the world to make friends for you.

Rolling around on tank-style tracks, the creepy machines would scan the faces of people and animals around them and analyse their emotions.

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They would then engage strangers and pets in conversation in a bid to help make you new friends.

Plans for the “emotionally sensitive” gadgets, which resemble a Dalek from Doctor Who, were laid out by Facebook in a European patent.

It reckons its 2.4billion users may one day want to use the robots as “proxies” for real-world interactions.

As well as making friends, the bots would perform several tasks while we controlled them remotely from a smartphone app.

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Equipped with GPS systems, androids would be capable of picking out objects of interest and snapping photos of them.

These could later be uploaded to your Instagram account.

All the while, an iPad-sized screen displaying the users head will sit atop the robot.

It’s not clear if it would work as a live video feed, or just a picture to give people an idea of what you look like.

Droids would be programmed to interact with people by using a sophisticated camera system to scan faces and body language.

It would assess a person’s “likely emotional state” and “sounds emitted”, allowing them to natter with strangers via speakers and microphones.

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Facebook has kept tight-lipped about its plans for the robot.

The company is already working with New York University on AI-powered robotics.

Like with any patent, the plans are no guarantee that Facebook will ever build the tech.

Facebook said as much in a statement, explaining that the patent was not necessarily “an indication of future plans”.

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