You can now pet a chicken across the Internet! Yes, that’s right - sit in your apartment in New York City, and experience the rural life by petting a chicken in Iowa. Oliver and Lisa Douglas ain’t got nothing on you!
(Quick, how many of you got that reference without the aid of Google?)

Researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore have developed an automatic response system which works across networks, with both participants able to feel and..uh..be felt… across networks such as the Internet. The haptic (relating to or based on the sense of touch) system may seem whimsical in the context of being able to massage a chicken remotely, but the potential for the technology is mind-boggling.

The project has been nearly two years in the making. Explained professor Adrian David Cheok, the leader of the team, “This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed. We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much wider significance…

[Pet a Chicken Across the Internet! But Wait, There's More, Continued]