Japan\\\'s Hitachi unveils joking robot

Japanese scientists unveiled a robot with a sense of humour Tuesday, and claimed it was capable of knowing when its jokes had fallen flat.
The pint-sized roller-skating EMIEW2 -- pronounced like the flightless bird -- is able to have a short conversation with a human being, without being given a script.
The red and white robot picks key words from a sentence -- for example, "how many" -- to try to work out what question it is being asked, then confirms the inquiry before firing back an answer.
Engineers at Hitachi have programmed the android to understand a range of human responses, including non-verbal signals like nods.
It uses this comprehension to determine if its interlocutor has got the "joke" it has just told, said scientists, according to AFP.