Robotic Presence For a Telecommuter

McGregorMortis writes "Ivan lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and telecommutes to work in Waterloo, Ontario. But in meetings, speaker-phones suck: can't hear everybody, can't move around, no visual contact. So Ivan made an IvanAnywhere robot to give him a physical presence in the office. If Ivan wants to talk to a coworker, he just steers radio-controlled IvanAnywhere into that person's office for a chat."

Re:Erm...

[khakipuce]

Read the article, it addresses most of your concerns. Clearly there is no point in having an office full of robots, it only has meaning where one or two team members are separated from the rest. I work in an open-plan office, which is common in the UK and it has benefits and problems. One of the benefits is that I can see who in the team is at their desk, who is on the phone, who is getting a coffee, etc. So if I need to ask someone a question I can wait until they are at their desk and then go over and ask. The issue with telecommuting is that If I phone up the person may be away from their desk, which then disturbs someone else, who has to take a message, etc. The robot solves this problem, it also allows the telecommuter to decide whether to make sensible and less intrusive decisions, Jane is tlaking to John, I'll wait until they have finished before talking to Jane ...

Re:Good application for iRobot Create

[scaz]

Actually, iRobot produced a robot called the iRobot-LE which later became a commercial product called the CoWorker that was designed specifically for telepresence applications. They couldn't find a market for it and eventually discontinued production. (You can see images of both here: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring05/Rodriguez /coworker2.htm [ufl.edu]here )

Re:Video conferencing no use?

[Pig Hogger]

4. A robot is never allowed in the bathroom.

Er, R. Daneel Oliwaw did go several times to the bathroom. And even to bed!

PROP: The same thing, done in 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

John Canny and Eric Paulos at UC Berkeley built exactly the same system in 1994, right down to the design. The project was called "Personal Roving Presence", or PROP. The only difference was that the PROP design didn't use cardboard boxes. They also built the blimp-based telepresence systems that were hinted at in the article.

Everything's online at http://prop.org./ [prop.org.] Thirteen years ago, before wireless networks, this was extremely forward-thinking on Canny/Paulos's part. It was even used to give tours of UC Berkeley's CS building.

Interesting to see it's making a comeback.