Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

Famous dead pop legend Michael Jackson intended to construct an eerily-lifelike robotic duplicate of himself, according to reports. Detailed three-dimensional scans of the deceased globo-celeb's body were made, and the super-accurate body maps are now said to be on sale for a million dollars.

The story was reported yesterday by the Daily Star, which says that the occasionally troubled dead overlord of pop had the scans made in 1996 "in a bizarre bid to build a robot twin... [Unidentified] scientists say following his death on June 25, the eerie images could be used to bring him back".

The paper quotes an unnamed man purporting to be the late superstar's roboticist, who says that the Jacko body-template scans are still in existence and can be had by anyone willing to cough up $1m.

“The data has been in our archives and vault since 1996,” the incognito robo-twin builder told the paper.

“The thing about this data is it immortalised him at the age of 37, before his nose was disfigured and when he was in the prime of life.”

The story seems as credible as one could reasonably ask for in a case of this type: Jackson was well known to have a fondness for robotic duplicates of himself. Just two years ago, The Reg reported on plans by the pop titan to have a gigantic 50-foot-tall mechanoid duplicate of himself built, equipped with lasers and accompanied by an unspecified number of "human cyborgs".

On that occasion, Jackson was said to have "looked at the sketches and liked them", though in that case the plans never bore fruit. Doubtless the 1996 body-dupe maps would have been employed in building the Jacko-colossus machine had the scheme gone ahead.

It seems inevitable that the data vaults will eventually give up their secrets, and that the late megastar will once again walk among us (or possibly in the case of the 50-foot model, upon us) in robotic form.

Read the Star report here. ®