BRAMPTON, Ont. - To the casual observer, she's the very embodiment of a lady.
Dressed demurely in a blushing pink blouse, hands sheathed in dainty white gloves, Aiko -- quite possibly Canada's first android -- sits patiently, ready to engage in polite conversation using her 13,000-word vocabulary.
She'll recognize your face, shake how-do-you-do, read you a story, add sums and deliver the current weather.
But underneath her wispy auburn hair and peaches and cream complexion is an anatomically correct silicone fembot, easily modified for any number of uses.
Of course peddling her to the sex industry would be lucrative, her creator agrees, but he insists he has far more noble aspirations for Aiko -- which means "love child" in Japanese.
"To be honest with you, sex sells," said Trung Le, 33, after cradling the five-foot tall, 27-kilogram life-like doll on his lap for photographs in his parents' Brampton, Ont., home where he lives.
"It sells, but it's not like (she's) one of those $99 (dolls), right? It would be very expensive (to use that way). It would be cheaper just to spend money on my own, real girlfriend."
Le doesn't have a girlfriend right now, though, because he's been much too busy over the past year and a half developing the uber feminine robot. (To those who contend Aiko is his girlfriend, he has these words: "I don't care what they say.")
Costing him $25,000 so far in parts -- including a sex doll from Japan for a body, sensors on her head, arms, face and breasts, oodles of bone-structure mechanics, a camera in her neck and computer processors -- the project has moved from hobby to full-fledged passion.
His hopes for the humanoid's use are wide, varied and all in the name of helping humanity.
Le sees possible applications within homes for the elderly, inside hospitals or the military, working reception or providing airport security.
He also sees her as a research tool for developing fully-sensing limb replacements for people who've had an amputation.
In fact, she's so sensitive to touch if someone gets a little too rough, she cries out indignantly. If they're really pushing the boundaries, she moves in for a slap.
Le's older brother Quang, 35, doesn't entirely share his brother's modest views. Having been financially supporting his brother since Trung Le left his job about three months ago, he's trying to convince him to think big. And if that means moving towards the erotic, so be it.
"I don't see why not," Quang Le said. "I see a big application for this in any industry, you just have to tailor her to that industry."
With Trung Le's skills, it wouldn't even be that hard to do, the trouble is finding the financial backing.
So far, though, no one has been willing to pony up the estimated $12,000 in parts for his next goal: to give Aiko the ability to walk.
"Most people ... say it's fake," he said, explaining that when people watch his You Tube demonstrations, they think it's CGI or that she's pre-programmed.
Le, a former software engineer, graduated with a chemistry degree from York University. He built his first robot for a school science fair around the age of 8, shortly after his family moved to Canada from Japan, where they were living after leaving his birth country of Vietnam.
Every time he submitted an entry to the fair, however, he was somehow disqualified. So he backed away from his hi-tech dreams. Then more recently, he found the desire to create stirring within him again.
"I just want to see how far I can go, basically," he said. "It's one guy versus the corporation. (It's) like 50 engineers and million-dollar budgets against one guy, from his home, with his credit cards."
