Robotic telepresence : Sit at home and travel at the same time!!

Today’s most advanced videoconferencing equipment, installed in dedicated meeting rooms, delivers startlingly vivid images and sounds from afar. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to equip each room, however, and in most offices many fruitful meetings happen informally, in people’s offices or at the water-cooler. Now a new and radically different approach to videoconferencing is helping overcome both shortcomings.

What is Robotic telepresence?

“Robotic telepresence”, as the technology is known, allows  people to move virtually through a distant building by remotely controlling a wheeled robot equipped with a camera, microphone, loudspeaker and screen displaying live video of its pilot’s face.

Telepresence robots cannot match the audio-visual fidelity of a good, large-screen videoconferencing installation, with its carefully calibrated lighting, eye-lines and audio. But the robots cost much less and are more flexible. They give their pilots the freedom to converse with anybody at the remote location—rolling over to the desk of a colleague, say, or accompanying a busy boss on her way to a meeting—rather than limiting communication to a specific time in a special room. Proponents of the technology say that by placing a remotely controlled embodiment of yourself in another location you can nurture your contacts, increase your influence and assert your authority.

Where it can be used?

Telepresence robots are not just for office workers, however. They also let home buyers tour distant properties virtually, allow doctors to conduct bedside consultations from afar and provide a cheap way to patrol workplaces at night. Oculus, a robot used mostly for security patrols, is essentially a set of wheels for a laptop running Skype videoconferencing software which can be controlled using a smartphone. Made by Xaxxon Technologies, based in Vancouver, it costs $290. Some globe-trotting parents have even begun using robotic telepresence systems to stay in touch with their children at home.

Robotic-telepresence technology for hospitals is now so good “it’s like being at the bedside”, says Antonio Marttos, a doctor who uses robots to visit gunshot and bombing survivors in Brazil, Haiti, Iraq and elsewhere, from his base at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. But it’s expensive.

But the greatest commercial opportunity lies in boosting workplace productivity, says Tim Lenihan, head of strategy for Anybots, a manufacturer based in Santa Clara, California. Bosses can keep employees on their toes by embodying themselves in a robot to cast an unexpected eye around the office from home or the road, he says. To point to things, pilots can use a laser pointer mounted on the QB, the firm’s two-wheeled, ramp-climbing robot, which costs $9,700. (While moving, the QB balances by continuously rolling under its centre of gravity—like balancing a broom in the palm of your hand.)

Telepresence robots are gradually getting cleverer. Some, like the Oculus, automatically dock themselves to a nearby charging station when battery power is low. Others can synchronise themselves to users’ schedules, autonomously rolling into a given meeting at a particular time, for example. But the sensors needed for the robot to be able to navigate on its own can be expensive. The autonomous version of PeopleBot, a telepresence robot made by Adept Technology of Pleasanton, California, costs $32,000, in part because of the on-board infra-red and laser-mapping kit.

The future:

“The next stage in the evolution of telepresence robots may be to give them limbs”

The next step for telepresence robots may be to give them limbs—not to manipulate distant objects, but to make the robots more expressive. The pilot’s arm movements are sensed using a motion-capture device such as the Microsoft Kinect, and then relayed to the distant robot. A forthcoming $300 stationary robot called Wobot, designed by Dr Hsu at Yuan Ze University, makes arm gestures to express its controller’s happiness, surprise or disgust.

A telepresence robot sheathed in rubbery skin is being sold to researchers by Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International. Resembling an androgynous and legless child with short, handless arms, Telenoid, as it is called, is essentially a large humanoid phone. The idea is that lonely grandparents “feel the human presence” of relatives who speak through it while remotely moving its head and other body parts, says the project’s leader, Hiroshi Ishiguro. But this creepy robot is unlikely to catch on outside Japan, says Timo Kaerlein, a German researcher who studied Telenoid on a visit to Kyoto. One observer described it as a nightmarish, fetus-like “demon-spawn”. By comparison, having your disembodied boss drive up to your desk for a quick chat seems reassuringly normal.

To let you get a feel for how they look in action, here is a video showcasing Robotic telepresence on Youtube.