Mannequin

When it comes to practicing their tackles, young football players generally either tackle their teammates or go after an inanimate tackle sled. The Shadowman Junior, however, offers another choice – it's still not a person who could get hurt, but it presents a more realistic moving target.

The mannequins used in crash tests are so specialized that when the US Army went looking for one of its own, it awarded a contract to California-based Diversified Technical Systems (DTS) to help develop the first instrumented dummy designed for military vehicle blast testing.

Iconeme is debuting its VMBeacon technology in selected stores in the UK. The technology is installed in mannequins and visual displays. Customers who download the Iconeme app can then receive information about clothes, promotions, save looks they create and share them on social media.

The British Ministry of Defence's Porton Man isn't your average squaddie. He’s a robotic mannequin designed to test suits and equipment for the British armed forces to protect them against chemical and biological weapons.

Robotic mannequins are being tested at high-end Korean clothing stores.

EyeSEe store mannequins have cameras and microprocessors in their heads, for gathering demographic data on shoppers.

The new Qumarion electronic mannequin allows artists and animators to easily pose CG characters

Japanese company REAL-f offers extremely realistic 3D models of human faces and heads.

The Fits.me virtual fitting room is an online changing room where you enter your sizing statistics and a robotic mannequin models how various sizes will look on your torso - now it's available for women too.

Fits.me is a virtual fitting room where customers can see what size fits best when shopping online

The D+ropop robotic mannequin is incredibly elegant and will perform a host of new and existing modeling tasks for a one-off price of around USD$5500. It'll work 24/7, won’t throw tantrums, get involved in scandals, or be perpetually late.