What are good research projects in artificial intelligence for a PhD thesis?
I see great need of an exhaustive survey of extant virtual avatars, including underlying virtual avatar technologies, with a focus on modularity in virtual avatar technology and interoperability of virtual avatar technology with hardware robots (such as animatronic talking heads).
I see a lot of relation here with simulation environments, robotic simulation techniques, as well as telepresence technology. Also to be taken into consideration should be virtual reality, augmented reality, and two-way human-robot augmentation, in terms of humans teaching robots and robotic technology in turn empowering or augmenting humans.