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It's October and most of India is still sweating. But it's not only human beings who suffer in high temperatures. It's robots too.

A new humanoid robot developed by the University of Tokyo can do pushups – powered by 108 motors – for 11 minutes straight and not overheat. How? By sweating like humans do.

Showcased at a recently concluded tech conference in Japan, the project, titled “Skeletal Structure with Artificial Perspiration for Cooling by Latent Heat for Musculoskeletal Humanoid Kengoro” uses a cup of de-ionised water – it has to be replaced every 12 hours – which bubbles through Kengoro's frame to keep the robot cool.

This is the sixth of the bio-robots that the Tokyo lab has developed. Last year, the lab displayed its "kitchen robot", the best part of which, one of the team members said, was that "you don't have to feel bad about asking it to do things".

In spite of his abilities, Kengoro isn't yet a patch on human beings. David Escojido aka Popeye did 2,298 pushups in an hour for his entry in The Guinness Book of World Records. We don't know how much he sweated.