No it ain't spam. This haptic cow simulator done by the Glasgow Interactive Systems Group and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (University of Glasgow, UK):
Bovine rectal palpation is a necessary skill for a veterinary student to learn. However, lack of resources and welfare issues currently restrict the amount of training available to students in this procedure. Here we present a virtual reality based teaching tool - the Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator - that has been developed as a supplement to existing training methods. When using the simulator, the student palpates virtual objects representing the bovine reproductive tract, receiving feedback from a PHANToM haptic device (inside a fibreglass model of a cow), while the teacher follows the student's actions on the monitor and gives instruction. We present a validation experiment that compares the performance of a group of traditionally trained students with a group whose training was supplemented with a simulator training session. The subsequent performance in the real task, when examining cows for the first time, was assessed with the results showing a significantly better performance for the simulator group.
Definitely a tangible-oriented design!
The corresponding scientific paper: Baillie, S., Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Mellor, D. and Reid, S. Validation of a Bovine Rectal Palpation Simulator for Training Veterinary Students. In Proceedings of MMVR 2005 (Long Beach, CA, USA).