Tobita Hiroaki and his colleagues at Sony Computer Science laboratory have an interesting approach in telepresence robotics, a small blimp that projects an avatar video image on its envelope. NewScientist (source of the video above) reports that apart from the obvious fun factor of talking to what appears to be a giant floating head, this kind of telepresence robot could avoid the limitations of wheeled robots. However it is difficult for indoor blimps to dominate this market, their movement isn’t very accurate and they could be a bit ungainly. However they are very lifelike and people usually have a positive response towards them.
For more information you can read the article from NewScientist.