CUTTING-edge technology has provided an intriguing insight into the future of one of TV's most popular shows – by predicting just how Dr Who’s next companion might look.

Using equipment that would not look out of place in the Tardis, a scientist at the University of York has been taking an educated peek into the future.

Dr David Robertson, from the Department of Psychology, used facial recognition software - PsychoMorph - to blend together each of the Time Lord’s previous companion’s images to form an “average” female and male face.

By averaging together the faces of 14 different men and 27 different women to have played the role, he mimicked the process the brain is thought to perform when learning to recognise new people.

The technique is a different use of the PsychoMorph software, which ordinarily creates an average image based on different instances of the same person.

“As a fan of Dr Who, I really enjoy making these face averages and it is interesting that the companion averages show a certain resemblance to current actors,” said Dr Robertson.

“Initial responses suggest that the female average looks somewhat like Oscar-nominated actress Felicity Jones, while the male average is thought to bear a resemblance to Thor actor Chris Hemsworth."

The work does have its serious side however. In a recent study led by Dr Robertson, the use of a person’s face average, rather than an individual photo of them, meant the accuracy of a smartphone face authentication system was significantly improved, sometimes to perfect levels.

The finding comes at a particularly important time in the development of biometric authentication systems.

For example, new software uses face recognition to secure and unlock data in laptops, while some companies are introducing “selfie pay” - allowing users to pay for goods online using their face to authenticate the payment.

Dr Robertson suggests that the incorporation of face averages into such systems would undoubtedly bring benefits to their face recognition accuracy.

He said: “There have been lots of problems with automatic face recognition software in the past, but here we have developed a method of improving the system simply by using a face average rather than an individual photo. I would urge companies to look closely at the benefits this could bring.”