New offering in robotic telepresence – the MantaroBot

MantarobotSo, no sooner than I start this site than does a new player in the robotic telepresence space show up.

Mantaro Products – a product development and engineering shop has built a low cost telepresence robot – for $3500 – a much lower price than the $15K Anybot or even the $5K vGo.

Looking very much like the standard screen on a stick, the MantaroBot looks like another version of the Texai – even down to the use of Skype as the video transport solution.  The funniest response was Engadget complaining about the aesthetics of the device, which was amusing to read.
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Welcome to Pilot Presence!

I have not inaugurated a blog in a while – I thought I would welcome you to Pilot Presence, my newest blog of remote presence and/or robot telepresence.  Since there will be a growth in this industry and i spent a great deal of time investigating this area, I wanted to keep a thread going on the future of this new method of driving distance to zero but increasing the connection between people.

Long ago, a friend of mine once asked me why I spent so much time using computers.  Why did I think that connections could be made through BBSes, email lists and social networks?  Today – a lot of those questions have been lain to rest, but the issue of distance still remains.

While my background may be engineering, my undergraduate education and work experiences have had me dive off into communications and psychology – especially on the need for connecting people through the IP medium.  The easy act seems to be building the systems to create robotic telepresence, but I believe the true search will be around creating a true sense of presence between people – both from the pilot’s point-of-view and the participant’s point-of-view.

Since teleportation in the Star Trek sense is not happening anytime in the near future, I believe the concept that is remote presence will help achieve what seek through the goal of eliminating distance between each other.

I will use this site to post links of stories I have seen that are relevant as well as my own thoughts on what/where remote presence and/or robot telepresence will go.  I welcome you aboard on this journey.

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