The unease that creeps up your spine when you see something that acts human but isn't remains a big issue in robotics -- especially for robots that are built to look and speak like us.
That peculiar feeling is called the uncanny valley. One way roboticists work to bridge that valley is by matching a robot's lip movements with its voice. Last Wednesday, Columbia University announced research that delves into how a new wave of robot faces can speak more realistically.
Hod Lipson, a Columbia engineering professor who worked on the research, told CNET that a main reason why robots are "uncanny" is they don't move their lips like us when they talk. "We are aiming to solve this problem, which has been neglected in robotics," Lipson said.
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This research comes as hype has been spiking around robots designed for use at home and work. At CES 2026 earlier this month, for instance, CNET saw a range of robots designed to interact with people. Everything from the latest Boston Dynamics Atlas robot to household robots like those that fold laundry, and even a turtle-shaped bot designed for environmental research, made appearances at the world's biggest tech show. If CES is any indication, 2026 could be a big year for consumer robotics.
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Central among those are humanoid robots that come with bodies, faces and synthetic skin that mimics our own. The CES cohort included human-looking robots from Realbotix that could work information booths or provide comfort to humans, as well as a robot from Lovense designed for relationships that's outfitted with AI to "remember" intimate conversations.
But a split-second mismatch between lip movement and speech can mean the difference between a machine that you can form an emotional attachment to and one that's little more than an unsettling animatronic.
So if people are going to accept humanoid robots "living" among us in everyday life, it's probably better if they don't make us mildly uncomfortable whenever they talk.
Watch this: Lip-Syncing Robot Sings a Song 01:58
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