(Corvallis, OR) -- Researchers at Oregon State University are trying to give robots a little more charisma. Computer science assistant professor Heather Knight tells the Gazette-Times that her work is beginning to bear fruit. She had her students program a robot recently to act out a scene with a woman involving an apple. The robot claimed to be the "keeper of the apple," and told the woman she couldn't eat it because it was poisoned. She ate it anyway, and the robot darkly joked that it was now the keeper of a dead body.