From the New York Times and Engadget - There’s something totally, totally sad about the Hug, a new wireless-enabled pillow created by robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that let’s you remotely send a hug to someone far away (it’s mainly meant as way for grandparents and grandchildren to “stay in touch”. Basically you have one person squeeze the left paw of their Hug, then say the name of the person they want to send the hug to. It then automatically calls up the Hug owned by the corresponding person, who then squeezes the left paw of their Hug to accept the hug and create a direct link between the two pillows. Then each person can use sensors to…ok, this is getting way too creepy. Just read the article.
Hmm, makes you wonder how the brainstorming sessions went to get this off the ground...
"Hey, I've got this brilliant idea.... How about creating a Robotic Pillow..."