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There have been quite a few of these things. MantaRobot, Vgo, Anybot, and Texai/Suitable, all have commercial, mobile, telepresence robots available now. They all shove a videophone in someone's face.

Vgo probably has the best use case. They sell it to medical facilities, so doctors don't have to move around as much. This is an indication of the market. Telepresence only works if the person operating the device is someone the listeners have to suck up to.

I've been following the robotics telepresence scene ever since I stumbled upon Anybots whilst paroozing YouTube. I really think telepresence is a market that can fund more research and development into humanoid robots (at the very least, it draws less eyebrow raises as the sexbot industry). We have a lot of companies making money off specialized, robotic floor cleaners and lawn mowers, but if we really want to develop an all-purpose robot that can handle a lot of the work that we humans can, we need to put R&D into things like dynamically balancing on two legs, controlling limbs with dozens of actuators, and mapping motion commands in those limbs to sensor readings.

I know there are a lot of companies working on these problems already, but in order for them to remain, they have to get funded somehow. I honestly think telepresence robtos may be one of the best ways for companies to generate revenue while working on more advanced stuff. I hope to see more in the coming years!

I know we don't have the technology for a robot to keep its balance well enough on two legs

Actually, we do. Check out Dexter by Anybots based in the Silicon Valley. Let's see, this should get you started. Here is their official website.

Willow Garage has had a few projects. They did an autonomous model boat. They started on a driverless car, but never got very far in that direction. They showed the Stanford PR1 robot at RoboDevelopment two years ago, but their own second generation version is still at the parts-prototyping stage.

Anybots is probably further along. Take a look at their pictures. I've seen that machine in operation. Balance is automatic, but manipulation and movement are teleoperated.

I've seen the thing. Right now, it's a nice teleoperator, but can't do much if anything autonomously. Great platform, though. There's also Anybots, which does beautiful mechanical engineering. That, too, is a teleoperator right now.

It's nice to see the mechanical engineering problems of mobile robots being solved. The mechanics need to be done in the private sector to move research forward. University CS departments are terrible at cutting metal.

This will go mainstream for Xmas 2009, when the first dynamic self-balancing legged toy robots appear.

The folks at Anybots are basically working on that idea. Given that sufficient AI will take decades to develop, I believe their robots will initially be about providing telepresence capabilities along the lines that you describe.

There's also Dexter http://anybots.com/dexterwalks.html that seems to resist a good poke. Dexter can also jump without falling over.

This was already achieved MONTHS ago, and in much more impressive fashion, by Anybots.com...
Typical of the BBC to report THIS robot as 'news' because they obviously know nothing about the Anybots robots...

http://www.anybots.com/abouttherobots.html