My favorite webcomic, MegaTokyo by Fred Gallagher, includes an android character named "Ping". She's billed as a PlayStation2 accessory for a kind of role-playing game that (I gather) is very popular in Japan but not here: "dating simulations" or ren'ai, in which the immature or inexperienced* can learn how to relate to girls in the safety of their own gaming space.

MegaTokyo, by the way, is PG-13 -- one of the reasons I enjoy it -- so even though Ping is independently ambulatory, self-aware and volitional, there's been no innuendo as to whether or not she's "fully functional" in the way that Data once referred to himself.

[*notice I didn't say "young"]

I don't know a thing about modern Japan, but, combining this news with the robot dance partner Daniel posted a little while back, I detect a trend: toward safety, if not outright cowardice. I.e., a Japanese male can learn the social graces he's expected to have without fear of screwing up with a real partner's emotions. [I also suspect the geisha culture is an earlier manifestation of the same tendency] I have a lot of sympathy for the women who will eventually have to relate to these men, who will have educated themselves to the expectation that following the right script is all they need to do.

In any case: I have a creepy feeling that one of the first applications this android is given to perform -- especially once her developers get the legs working -- will be as a peripheral device to a gaming system.