Engineers at the University of Zurich’s Artificial Intelligence Lab are planning to design a humanoid robot with artificial muscles that could help people with everyday tasks - in just nine months. The team hopes that 1.2m tall Roboy, designed to look like a child, will eventually help the sick and elderly by acting as a mechanical helper. To help the robot move, the engineers are developing radical artificial ‘tendons’, the Daily Mail reported.

Roboy will have a skeleton similar to a human’s and will be operated via special artificial tendons that flex like out own muscles, they said.

The team has already signed up 15 project partners and over 40 engineers, and hope to fund the project using a combination of commercial partners and crowdfunding.

They are already developing parts of the Roboy, such as its skeleton like chest, which houses spring-like artificial tendons Roboy is expected to be ‘born’ in March 2013, when it will be unveiled at the Robots on Tour event in Zurich.

The team is even considering a tricycle for Roboy so it can carry heavy objects more easily.