Intimacy is the name of the game, forget the dildos and fleshlights -- these robots "mirror" each other one to one in both motion and resistance. just using your hands you can push back and forth on each other and it's a very intimate feeling of being connected physically.

I appreciate this may work for some folks, but it's never going to replace having limbs wrapped around each other and collapsing in a sweaty heap afterwards.

And sure, this is opening up a entirely new avenue on top of phone/cyber/webcam sex that wasn't available before, and marks a massive step forward in what's available when people are geographically separate.

At some point the robots will have limbs and sweat.

It would obviously be far from perfect, but for a LDR, the basic question would be whether it was better than phone sex, right?

Well yes, absolutely.

I tend not to bother with LDRs either, I must admit, I think they're mostly a bad thing.

I agree about LDRs in the long term, but if you're apart for a period due to career or life circumstances it's different, and some working relationships can start long distance and work out if someone moves.