Robots designed in Cornwall to look like humans have been used to impersonate holy men in religious ceremonies and to promote a sci-fi TV series where androids take over from their human oppressors.

Engineered Arts, which made a name for itself with its RoboThespian creation, is moving into new robotics realms with new human realistic looking robots.

Its human realistic robotics - called Mesmer - have the facial features and skin texture of real people.

The likeness to human beings is what is making their success and already the Penryn -based company has sold three to the Sai Teerth devotional theme park in India where they impersonate holy men and deliver devotional messages to the faithful.

At the other end of the spectrum, Engineered Arts' human robots have been used to promote the Westworld HBO TV series, with Ed Harris and Penzance -raised actress Thandie Newton , when it became available on NOW TV.

Intended for rich vacationers, Westworld is a futuristic park looked after by robotic "hosts" that allows visitors to live out their fantasies through artificial consciousness.

The Engineered Arts team with Fred and his robot clone. But which one is which?

Michael Todd, creative content producer with Engineered Arts said: "We placed a Mesmer in a London pub with the real person it is based on for a commercial promoting Westworld on NOW TV and that was really cool.

"The idea was for our robot 'Fred' to be let loose on the unsuspecting public inside a specially rigged English pub. Our real life Ted knew he was having a robot being built to resemble him, but up until that point, he had not been introduced to his digital doppelganger. To say he was pleased with the result is putting it mildly."

He added: "Our new robots have had a lot of development and we're already selling a few which is great. We have more on our order books which is even better.

"We sold three to this religious theme park in India where our robots impersonate religious figures and talk to the disciples and perform the gurus' famous speeches. That's different to what we've done before but it's also really cool."

Human looking robots are the future and Engineered Arts in Cornwall are behind their success

The team at Engineered Arts, which last year sponsored the original Cornwall Live Edge Awards - RoboThespian even compered the awards night along with our regional editor Jacqui Merrington - has grown in the last 12 months and now employs 19 people.

"RoboThespian is still very much our bread and butter and we continue to sell him around the world but the trend is very much towards the human realistic robots," Mr Todd added.

Mesmer robots may be on the rise but RoboThespian has continued to take an active role on the world stage, even performing a stadium show to 40,000 people in one day, with real life astronaut Andre Kuipers and doing a Ted talk at TEDx Truro.

Mr Todd said: "Engineered Arts is doing very well. We have expansion plans on the horizon and new clients in Australia we're looking forward to work with. We're still very much doing the roboty robots building the human looking ones is where we're expanding into."