There’s no real technical innovation involved in the creation of Salavador DaBot - unless you count the integration of super-fine robotic control, world-class image recognition, intricate real-life modeling for the arm movements, and speech synthesis that doesn’t sound stilted – all combined into one package and dashed with a little bit of whimsy.

So yes, there’s no innovation here, just a fantastic combination of cutting edge technology that manages to entertain, teach and inspire all at the same time. Salvador DaBot – “The Portraitist Robot” according to its creators, uses its on board cameras to capture images of bystanders (Salvador recognizes faces against most kinds of backgrounds) and draws out the most relevant pieces of information (in this case face contours) and converts them digitally, and then uses inverse kinematics to transform these captured images into movement for the arm, which holds a pen.

But never mind the technical explanation – I probably got it wrong anyway – the end result is a robot that moves in an eerily human-like fashion and has a voice to match. As listed above, this robot is a combination of hugely complicated technologies that is made to work together smoothly and not only that, produce your portrait at the end of a session. This alone qualifies the creators for the title of pure geniuses, but you know what else? Yes, you guessed right – it’s the Mario-like mustache and the big floppy red hat. The creators call it the moustache and beret patch. Sheer whimsical genius.