A robotic teddy bear developed at MIT combines robot interactivity with a kind of weird telepresence. The bear, called the "Huggable," has 1,500 skin sensors, actuators for movement, microphones in its ears, cameras in its eyes and a speaker in its mouth. Inside is a PC connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi. It can operated in fully autonomous mode, where it interacts without human intervention. More interestingly, it has a semi-autonomous mode, where it serves also as a conduit for interaction with someone over the Internet. People see and hear over the Internet what the bear sees and hears, plus control it remotely like a creepy puppet.



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