U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi

At the Siggraph 2006 show in Boston, various projects show how the senses can be enhanced by technology. U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi is a "virtual humanoid you can reach." In this display users experience shaking hands or touching the face of a computer-generated avatar.

This is an early stage of a project, from Michihiko Shoji of NTT DoCoMo, designed to build humanoid robots that you can touch and talk to--allowing robots to enter the world of virtual reality. The long-term goal is to, say, graphically endow a humanoid robot with the skills of a human baseball player and then play ball with it.