While I normally do not think having the telepresence robots dressed up as mannequins is a good idea (except on The Big Bang Theory), the people at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam ad agency created a set of these RPSes and allowed people to come together and try it out.
See the video that follows for more:
h/t to robotsnob.com and Virtual Holiday Dinner
After the CES show, a lot of people seemed to be upset at the anemic showing of robotic solutions this year. In this collection of links, I show off some of the more interesting articles I found.
Tracking my news feed and I see The Guardian in England got some great content from Brad Kayton (founder and inventor) at vGo. Brad suggests the marketspace for these remote presence devices should be “telepresence robotics”. See below for the video:
In it – he discusses two of his clients, Palantir Health and Orbitz having executives using the vGo in their offices. I am quite curious how the executives feel as they move around in the vGo.
I must admit – the video on the vGo looks relatively solid – but I wondered if it is because of the Bluetooth antenna that is connected to the back of the vGo or something else?
As announced yesterday, iRobot has jumped into the telepresence robot scene with their AVA offering. As reported in PCMag, CNET, Engadget, Hihook and many other sources, the 40 lb iRobot AVA offers: Continue reading
One of my favorite things I love comes straight out of some of my must-read sites like O’Reilly’s Radar and Colin’s ePolitics where they do a summary of interesting links/posts on remote presence / telepresence robots. I will endeavour to do this every week – and maybe twice a week. If you have any suggestions for links, feel free to connect on the comments.
And it seems that the concept of remote presence is becoming a ever growing meme, as seen by these articles: Continue reading
As I discovered the first article, I forgot the original article from Tom Simonite which is more publicly available. Again, some interesting thoughts bubble out of this article, which I can agree with his findings – especially when being the pilot of the robotic telepresence.
Our elastic sense of personal space posed one of the biggest problems. At a crowded party people get more cosy, and that seems to apply to robots too. Unfortunately the robot is only around four feet tall, and has a camera with a relatively narrow field of view. Even though I could tell that I was in a group conversation, I could only see one person at a time, from the viewpoint of a child, a strange experience for someone who stands 6 feet tall. Threading my way around the crowed party without bumping into things was a challenge I didn’t master.
One of my personal concerns as I mentioned before – height is very important since our sense of intimacy and position is often determined by the stature of the participants in a conversation. And having a wider field of view (humans are more than 180 degrees, webcams are often 40 to 60) is extremely important. But it is important to note that while we have great peripheral vision, we tend to focus on one area at a time – while the rest of the field of view is fuzzed out and rapidly focus as we move from one viewpoint to another (try this yourself).
Continue reading
In the newest issue of the MIT Technology Review, Editor Tom Simonite demonstrates the use of the vGo from vGo Communications within the MIT Tech Review offices and discusses the coming need for new social skills for office dwellers that will engage with remote presence systems.
If these robots are to introduce an era of effortless interaction with machines, the changes may have to come from us, not them. “As these machines appear in the workplace, we will see completely new social norms forming around them,” says Takayama. We humans may have to learn to judge people represented by electronic bodies differently from those we can see in the flesh. (emphasis mine)
In the article, Simonite discusses the vGo (from his use of it in the Cambridge office), the Anybots QB and the Willow Garage Texai.
Photo credit: Brittany Sauser
Our friend Fred Nikgohar from RoboDynamics shows his local CBS affiliate the future of robot telepresence with his TiLR system. In the course of the conversation, he hints at a newer version called the Luna. Wonder when Luna is due?
And today we discover the new “telepresence robot” from GOSTAI called the Jazz. Interestingly enough, the team at Gostai have eschewed the concept of two way visual presence which I use as a hallmark for a true RPS, and play in the range of the WowWee Rovio or the iRobot Connectr.
What is nice is that Gostai is a team that is sharing their own libraries in an open-source fashion and working to productize their offerings. At close to €8000 to buy (close to $10K) and a more reasonable €1800 to rent ($2400) , it seems like quite a pricey solution.
I have yet to speak with Gostai on their new product, but when I do, I will happily post up the interview. For now, let me include the video presentation:
When I first started looking into robotic telepresence over a year ago, one of them – HeadThere, a company started at the TechShop in San Jose, CA – was one of the few (at the time) that (I believed) got the value of the idea of remote presence.
In reading their site, they understood the value of technology enabling communication and built a rather compelling prototype called the Giraffe. With a movable base, and a head and neck that moved via remote control, their product seemed to miles ahead of everybody.
Following a link in the Engadget article, it seems as though they have been working out of Sweden designing and developing their product for the use in eldercare. Their new site, giraff.org, shows great video and other details on their Giraff (I assume version 2 with the new head elements).
It’s great to see these pioneers working on their product and using a customer need to drive product development. I can only hope to see the Giraff make it across the pond in the near future.
My favorite quote from the Giraff team:
The founders believe that technology should always work for people, and never the reverse.
