“This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed,” said professor Adrian David Cheok, the leader of the team, who has been developing the technology for nearly two years.

Uhhh… where do I start?

Firstly, this is not (as far as I can tell) a joke, a spoof or a hoax.

Some researchers, being paid in a research institute to do bone fide scientific research have created the first known system to allow you to pet a chicken, remotely. Over the Internet. In case you work away from home a lot and your chicken gets lonely, presumably.
Wired News article
Mixed Reality Lab research video

I am really not sure what the application is.

Are there hoards of lonely-yet-tactile chickens, languishing sad and unpetted? Is there a frighteningly large proportion of poultry farmers who like to get physical with their livestock… but who don’t care enough to do it in person? Is there a huge, untapped market of potential hen-petters among Internet users at large? Won’t this play havok with natural chicken-to-chicken interaction? In fact, who’s to say that the chickens don’t get totally wierded-out by all this disembodied petting? It could be driving their little chicken minds berserk. It would certainly freak me out.

And why chickens? The usual animals to employ as lab rats are, well, rats, and I for one would much rather pet a rat than a chicken. (Next door neighbour has a pet rat. It’s very cute. Conversely I know nobody who keeps a chicken for companionship.) Could it just be that chickens are stupid? That in fact they are the only animals stupid enough to interpret a prod on the back from an electronic jacket as any kind of affectionate gesture? Just a thought.

The Wired article cites future applications which include (a) stroking animals to which you’re alergic, and (b) future school-children petting grizzly bears, remotely.

Firstly, if you’re alergic to cats, bloody avoid them. You don’t have to pet them. And for crying out loud, if this means that some rich idiot is going to keep animals in hermetic issolation and fiddle with them via a haptic interface, kill me now. Or better yet, kill the idiot.

Secondly, encouraging zoo visitors to believe that they can safely pet dangerous animals seems—to me—a rather ill-advised path. (Call me reactionary.)

Let’s face it, it’s all pretty silly. And their talk of ‘remote Internet hugging’ doesn’t make things any more plausible as far as I’m concerned. In fact, as far as I can see, this research can have only one possible end goal in mind.

The prosecution rests.

Note that although the poultry-interfering remote presence thing is to say the least daft, the same lab has come up with some pretty cool stuff.