Meet the remote-control self

Often wish you could be in two places at once? Ever wish you could clone yourself? Japanese computer scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro felt the pressure, too, so he built an android in his own image that walks and talks just like him.

"Shiguro, whose job is teaching at Osaka University, an hour's drive away, designed Geminoid so he could "robot in" to his classes and skip the commute," this article explains. "As he steps out from behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz, standing beside his robot self, the shift is disconcerting."