Texas Student Attends School As a Robot 218
kkleiner writes "Freshman Lyndon Baty's immune system is so fragile he can't risk being surrounded by people his own age, yet he attends classes at his high school in Knox City, Texas every day. All thanks to a robot. The Vgo telepresence platform is a four foot tall bot on wheels with a small screen, camera, speakers and microphone at the top. Baty logs into the robot remotely from his home, using his PC and a webcam to teleconference into his classes. Baty can drive Vgo around his school, switching between classes just like regular students. For a boy that has spent much of his life sick and isolated from his peers, Vgo not only represents a chance at a better education, it's also an opportunity for freedom and comradery."
Typo (Score:4, Insightful)
You misspelled "Sheldon Cooper".
Re:My mom needs to see this (Score:5, Insightful)
Just buy her a washtub, a box of candles and a few cord of wood.
Then make a habit of throwing away her fresh foods during the winter.
What's wrong with sexbots? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think you're more likely to get funding to build sexbots. There's *how many* Japanese companies that build multi-thousand-dollar sex-dolls already? And there's at least two in the USA that make high-end sex-dolls (and too many making cheap inflatables)...
Although there may be eyebrow-raising, most (male) people are secretly rubbing their hands together (and other things) at the prospect of an autonomous sex-bot. And while telepresence may be nice, whoever corners the market for sex-bots is going to make Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg look like paupers.
Although you may not believe it, Futurama has it right. Sex-bots might be declared illegal in some future, because it will seriously impact reproduction, it may lead to low number of human to human pairings as well as having half the population (women) wondering how they are going to compete. See: Chobits/Persecoms