Scientific Dictatorship

Users can have daily conversations with the 38-centimetre-tall (15-inch) robot, which will crunch calories and provide feedback and encouragement on their weight-loss progress.

For those who hate manuals -- there isn't one. Switch Autom on and it's ready to go.

Its blue eyes open and its head swivels as a computer inside its head allows it to search for a human face in front of it and maintain eye contact.

"Hello, I'm Autom! Press one of the buttons below to talk to me," it says in a robotic female voice with an American accent. "I'm ready to get started. Let's keep working together."...

..."You'll see a lot of changes in the next few years. In 30 years this is going to look very primitive," he said.

"Technology has really advanced in the last decade to allow us to finally create something like this. A lot of what goes into this would 10 years ago have not been possible. Five years ago it would not have been feasible and two years ago it would not have been affordable."

Kidd's company Intuitive Automata is based in Hong Kong and Autom also speaks Chinese -- both Cantonese and Mandarin.

Initially, though, the company will use an English-language version to target the United States, where the government estimates two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, followed by Europe.

Kidd is confident the model can be adapted to different languages and cultures as well as other health issues -- chronic disease management, diabetes, even drug and alcohol abuse.

The UN Economic Commission and the International Federation of Robotics forecast a market for personal and service robots worth about 52 billion US dollars by 2025.