Perhaps that’s why huge tech advances are being made when it comes to food, cars and houses, compared to modest progression in the beauty sphere. Human touch is such an important part of the cosmetics and wellness industry – think the one massage therapist who knows the knots in your back like the weeds in her own garden.

Research also attests to the benefits physical human contact can have on our health. The Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine says it carried out more than 100 studies into touch and found positive effects included faster growth in premature babies, reduced pain and improved immune systems in people with cancer.

You can’t argue with that. Trust is a key issue here. Will we ever really truly put our faith in the machines that inspire articles about ‘Robot Rebellions’ and ‘AI Global Dominance’?

“These sorts of headlines come about whenever there is industrial advance; people said steam engines and cars would ‘take over the world’,” counters Dr Mary Ellen Foster, a lecturer in computing science at the University of Glasgow.

But research carried out by psychologists at Oxford and Cornell universities found that people mistrust those who make decisions by calculating costs and benefits – exactly as robots and computers do. So we might find it hard to hand over something as intimate as our appearance to a droid we find a bit fishy in the first place.

“We learn from an early age how to prepare our faces in ways that are attractive to us and to society,” says Pindeus. “To give this authority away to robots, which are often seen as inferior to humans or are laughed at, takes away part of our autonomy – and this is what we wanted to bring to light.”

Looking at my reflection in the mirror once the Beautification robot has run its five-minute cycle is, let’s just say, disturbing. The inventors initially struggled with how to give the machine’s actions the right level of “aggression”, and sure enough, I’m sitting here like some kind of clown, a gory red gash extending from my mouth across the bottom half of my face, with chunks of lipstick across my teeth to boot.

A trail of blue indicates where the robot has slashed at my skin, and as for my hair… a large, matted chunk at my crown appears to be defying gravity, thanks to the bountiful doses of fixing spray. I’m reminded of childhood escapades with my mother’s make-up bag, and feel some kind of bond with the robot.

We let a robot do our makeup – and this is what happened