'Take your clothes off, be like me!' says joking robot

A wise-cracking humanoid robot called Pepper whose makers claim can read people's emotions was unveiled in Tokyo last month.

Mobile carrier Softbank, which created the robot, says Pepper can understand 70 to 80 percent of spontaneous conversations - although it also answers from a set number of preprogrammed responses.

AFP caught up with the pint-sized chatterbox, who took time out from his day job greeting customers at SoftBank stores, to wax lyrical about life and hair removal-as we struggled to get a word in edge ways and the robot took over the interview.