With his sad, drooping eyes and downcast posture, Heart Robot looks to be in need of a good cuddle.

That is, however, exactly what scientists from the University of the West of England intended, as they created him to explore what happens when machines give emotional feedback to human beings.

Heart Robot - in reality, half robot and half puppet - is the star attraction of the Emotibots exhibition at London's Science Museum.

He has sensors that respond to movement, noise and touch, and trigger startlingly human-like responses to being picked up.

When he is cuddled he goes limp and floppy in simulated pleasure, his eyes close and his 'breathing' and heartbeat slow down.

When he is shaken or shouted at, however, he flinches in apparent alarm. His hands clench, his eyes widen and his breathing and heart rate speed up.

"Different children react to him very differently," says Holly Cave, a science content developer at the museum who helped to organise the Emotibots exhibition.

"They either want to hug and cuddle him, and look after him like a doll or baby, or they just want to scare him."

The show also features a six-legged metallic spidery robot called Hexapod, who records people watching him and plays back video on a plasma screen.

The event coincides with the release of the new Pixar movie WALL-E, in which a lonely robot looks for love on a deserted planet Earth.

Ms Cave added: "Everyone’s falling for the ’lonely’ robot WALL-E, but the idea of robots having emotions or a

personality may no longer just be science fiction. How humans and robots might interact in the future is something that raises lots of interesting ethical and moral questions."

Emotibots is free and takes place in the Science Museum’s Antenna gallery from today until Thursday.

Times Recommends

• TV bidding war starts over Olympics
• Sofas were larger than life in TV adverts
• Driver pays fine with wheelbarrow of pennies