It looks reasonably useful for the remote person, who can see and hear what's going on in the room. (As long as it has stereo microphones so you can get some 3d

It looks reasonably useful for the remote person, who can see and hear what's going on in the room. (As long as it has stereo microphones so you can get some 3d sound perception, that's always been my beef with videocons.) However, there's much less information going to the people who are with the robot: there's no body language, no facial expressions. How do you even know who the robot is? Personally, I would not feel comfortable having a discussion with such a robot because of this. It's like an extreme version of talking to people who wear sunglasses inside. At least with video chat you can see people's faces.