The next great company will come from remote presence systems

from joshcUK on flickrFor about a month, everyone has been speaking about the loss of Steve Jobs and how it is a terrible blow to the tech ecosystem.  How, like HP, Apple might succumb to the same tired-old refrain to become a software and services company and jettison the hardware business altogether.

But, much like the industries before it – the manufacturers, the producers of the physical product, the captains of the industry, all drive the greatest innovations in the industries.  I can think of a few:

The ability to shape the “feel” and the production of a product that creates an experience for others is key in the adoption of a product.  Jobs has a fanatical attitude of the proper attention to detail, quite like how Bill and Dave used to have for a particular engineering culture (read The HP Way).

The ability to shape the culture, the product and the build of a product that is going to elicit an emotional response our of its users – that often comes from genius or a culture of genius – which allows others to rise to that level of perfection.

Remote presence system companies might be able to get great outsourced manufacturing deals in other countries and focus on contract manufacturing to bring a product to market – but it will be the passion for the users – both the pilot and the participants – that will make the best product stand out.  A company that OWNS the manufacturing; creates the plant and the experiences in hardware that will win out – software will not be the end-all, be-all.

I appreciate the work that GOSTAI, Anybots, vGo, iRobot and others are embarking on – and right now, I do not see anyone with the unifying vision of how the RPSes will exist in the world.  I believe it takes a combination of a leader with a single-minded passion and a team around him/her to bring this emotional connection to pass.

Yes – I think the vGo and the Jazz is cute, and the Anybot is a funky device that is quite impressive in its ability to handle the inverted pendulum.  But none of these products are in the direction I would say will change the way people interact with them.  I am waiting to see what the next Steve Jobs will appear in the industry.

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No Telepresence Robots Allowed!

Just saw this terrific comic from Bleeker Comics and thought you would have a laugh.

I will be catching up with Pilot Presence news in the coming weeks. Sorry for the extended holiday.

No telepresence robots allowed!

Source: Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

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One Year Anniversary of the Texai on The Big Bang Theory

On September 30th, it will be one year since Sheldon and the Shel-Bot made its appearance on the Big Bang Theory. In honor of that day, we uncovered a couple of shots from that fateful day on set.


Credits: The Big Bang Theory and Faye Oshima Belyeu

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Great shot of the Anybot flower girl…

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vGo is making some hay with LTE [video]

As I have been banging on with Big Data problems, I keep the google Reader open and have noticed that vGo is slowly but surely building up their distribution and product presence.

Recently, I read that they have successfully tested LTE and demoed it at the Verizon Innovation Center on July 13th. Founder Tim Root gets quoted and the vGo gets a glamour shot about three minutes into the video.

In addition, vGo gets some press on CNBC’s “The New Industrial Revolution” segment. If the embedding worked, you should see it below. Continue reading

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Evaluation on iRobot and Intouch Health partnership

Today, iRobot and InTouch Health made news by announcing a partnership leveraging the business connections of InTouch into the healthcare industry and iRobot’s strong technical innovation efforts in robotics. (see the press release here)

Granted, Dr. Wang (Yulin) is a gifted robotist that we interviewed before, but with InTouch Health, they are focused on the development of the continuum of service for the healthcare market. InTouch have successfully developed technologies that support networking across the emergency networks for their systems, they have handled the troublesome hurdles of the FDA and other medical regulations to get their products into hospitals and other medical locations, and they have spent a great deal of time learning about the customer needs in the healthcare market. As they continue to build out their offerings, which is becoming more and more workflow-based, InTouch could benefit from a deep technology bench that is growing with other revenue sources.

Enter iRobot and Colin. Not sure if Colin had the lead on the deal, but with their push and experimentation on the AVA and their need to get a strong foothold in another market, why not partner with the one company that has become synonymous with “telemedicine” and “remote presence”? With AVA in this market, InTouch can keep their eye on the networking and workflow management, while iRobot focuses on the platform and the other “robotic” issues.

We also love the inclusion on the press release of the “extensive cross-licensing of the companies’ patent portfolios, giving the collaboration a formidable patent position.” WIth Suitable, Robodynamics, vGo and others – this sounds like a big stick that can be used to beat down other players from entering the market.

The problem with that is that InTouch Health somewhat successfully discouraged a competitor with part of their portfolio and discovered that most of their patents had limited use – aside from pushing that company to Sweden (see the story on Giraff). We see that line as a way to scare people off, but we are not fans of when patents are used to threaten innovation – and in this case, we can see that being one of the tactics used.

We see this as a move to strengthen the two companies in their own positions – Dr. Wang gets access to new tech and a salesforce that has been itching to get into another market with a viable product and iRobot gets to value itself more as its patent portfolio becomes more defendable and they have another great partner.

Congrats guys – we look forward to see what fruits are borne of this relationship.

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GOSTAI delivers on their new navigation interface [video]

Jazz Interface July 2011

In January, we were given the chance to test out the GOSTAI Jazz system from New York in Paris and were slightly underwhelmed with the interface at the time. There were numerous bugs that needed to be worked out and Jean-Christophe (JC) said – wait six months and we will have another interface.

In March, at innorobo, JC showed off the new physical design of the Jazz and let me operate the system on the showroom floor. Again, I noted that the interface had not yet changed. He said “a few more months” suggesting the end of June.

Yesterday, JC sent me a lovely message on Skype which suggested I take a look at the new interface which he had posted on YouTube. And yes, I can say, the interface has certainly improved from the last time.
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Suitable Technologies enters the field…

Suitable Tech homepageWell, one of the many under-cover companies has now popped up on the radar in the telepresence space, as announced in Technology Review which informs us about Suitable Technologies, a spin-off from Willow Garage that is taking my favorite RPS system (the Texai) and working on improving it for delivery in the second half of 2012.

In reading the post, Willow Garage CEO Steve Cousins discusses the difference between the Anybots or vGo due to their “spy bot” designation and the small screen. The Texai and its next incarnation will more than likely support a much larger screen to provide a richer view of the pilot for the participants.

There are a number of features expected in the new RPS to be offered from Suitable, but none have been discussed or released to the public as of yet.

Based on the job listings, it looks like Suitable has been focusing on the software development efforts (see their post on using WebM for the Texai), including a number of roles that are focused on the software development process (e.g., Build and Release) and some mechanical roles. While Suitable is spun out of Willow Garage, it is not clear if the manufacturing capability Willow has for building the PR2s are being included in the Suitable effort.

I, like you, await more details from the team at Suitable to show off their newest efforts.

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Another player in the field?

So, today at the WWDC conference, it looks like there could be another player dipping their toe in the pool – Taptic Toys.

Their Creative Director, Romina Espinosa, played the pilot on their prototype – but from the video below, it looks like the toy is exactly that – a toy. The gent with the RPS (my guess is his name is David Cann) seems to be potentially driving the RPS with his iPhone. Romina, who is an excellent actress and performer (you can see her portfolio site here) makes for an entertaining pilot.

I am not that impressed yet since it suffers from the same issues I have with many of the smaller RPS devices out there. Under four feet tall, the inverted pendulum is nice for some aspects of stability, but terrible for a static state and unlike the Anybots QB, it seems to have no third point for the resting state.

But people like commenting on it – so I include it for your amusement.

If Taptic Toys wishes to speak on the specs of their RPS, happy to clarify the details in this post. The website is simply a post of the same video – which has a poor audio quality.

(h/t from PC World and TUAW)

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Keeping up with Anybots

It has been a while since we have discussed our friends in Mountain View and last week, we caught up with Trevor and heard how the team has been cranking on rolling out their QBs to the market. As he wrote in his April post, the issues of static electricity have caused delayed they never expected. But, in the past week, they have put to rest most – if not all – of the issues and are ready to roll them out to their owners.

Trevor also informed us that they have also “democratized” the interface – now it runs on almost all browsers – but definitely with IE, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. While the challenge has been around taming the static electricity issue, other improvements have been snuck into this design and are rolling out to owners this month.

We talked about the QB being at TED 2011 and how it was a big hit at the event – both in Long Beach and in NYC. He and the Anybots team have already been thinking about how to learn from the production issues for their future iterations. Like any good entrepreneur, Trevor sees the experiences he has gained as another stepping stone for the next goal. CES 2012 anyone? I’ll be there!

Watch Trevor at Xconomy

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