* raises hand* I'm in an LDR and may only see her twice a year (each time for a month or two) but this doesn't excite me at all. Perhaps it's just the fact that I keep seeing people shout look someone solved the problem of LDRs which just makes me roll my eyes - the inability to have sex in certain times of the year is the least of our worries.

If anyone wants to "solve the problem of LDRs", I'd much prefer them to as a look at things like immigration laws, international transport, cultural barriers.

Yes I did think that might be one application, though I'm not sure how sold I would be even then. To each their own, and perhaps it would be better than nothing, but it would kill the intimacy aspect for me.

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.