Okay, obviously the robot pictured here is not the robot they are talking about in this article about a robotic wine taster, but it just struck me as funny:

Engineers from the NEC System Technologies laboratory and Mie University, both in Japan, developed the robot called Wine-bot.

It is about twice the size of a three-litre wine box and consists of a microcomputer and an optical sensing instrument, reported the online edition of New Scientist.

Currently, fraud detection is performed through human tasting and careful analysis of a vineyard's records.

Retailers and customs officials have been looking for a new machine that could identify wine fraud, speed up detection processes and reduce costs.

The new machine developed by the scientists can even tell where the wine came from, the report said.

For analysis, a five-millilitre sample of wine is poured into a tray in front of the machine.

Light-emitting diodes then fire infrared light at the sample and the reflected light is sensed by an array of photodiodes.

By identifying the wavelengths of infrared light that have been absorbed by the sample, the wine-bot is capable of distinguishing between 30 different varieties or blends of grape correctly within 30 seconds.

I realize this obviously has some kind of commercial use, but really, don't these guys have anything better to do? Like cure a disease or something?

You can find out more at this link to the New Scientist Tech.