A team of researchers at Meiji University in Japan have developed a robot that can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot with the same appearance. The robot's programming can process cognition and behavior information, thus allowing the robot's artificial nerve cell software the ability to detect imitation. Its lead inventor, Junichi Takeno, said emulation as it relates to robots "is an act that requires both seeing a behavior in another and instantly transferring it to oneself and is the best evidence of consciousness." While this prototype can sense itself seventy percent of the time, Takeno believes improved models can achieve a 100 percent accuracy rate by 2007.

Source (Discovery Channel)