This would sure help us include people in meetings when they’re far away. Further, it helps someone “take a look at something” from afar.
UPDATE: It occurs to me now that instead of the robot arms, which are great but horribly impractical, it instead have the screen on a super-quick motorized pan (left/right), tilt (up/down) AND rotation (leaning to left/right) control, so that all the ways one can move his head around is translated into the screen’s movement. That’s a whole lot of expression right there, and it could theoretically be controlled via pattern-recognition wizardry on the picture of the person’s face. That can work.
Oh yeah, and a motorized laser pointer, so the remote person can reach out and point to stuff: that button right THERE.
Longshot City 
November 16, 2008 at 9:23 am
Ha! Look at this! No screen, but you can drive it around remotely!
http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=3311370