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Willow Garage Shares Specs for TeleRobot, Takes It To Show and Tell at School

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by Aaron Saenz on March 14th, 2010
telerobot at school

A Willow Garage telepresence robot promoted careers in robotics at a local elementary school.

Wouldn’t you have loved to be the kid who brought a real life working robot to school for show and tell? Willow Garage delighted students at a Cupertino, California elementary school for their “Discovery Day” – an opportunity for children to learn about local careers – by sending one of their new telepresence robots (the Texai) to make a presentation. Among the firefighters, doctors, and business executives mingled two WG engineers: Rob Wheeler in person, and Dallas Goecker remotely controlling a Texai from Indiana. Talking with a robot that’s being operated from half a continent away is a pretty cool way to convince kids that open source robotics engineer is the coolest job ever. Check out more pics after the break.

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MeBot, the Telepresence Robot With Body Language (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on March 5th, 2010
mebot telerobot

MeBot is the first telerobot with moving limbs. Animatronics plus telepresence equals acceptance.

It may not make sense to your binary minds, robots, but humans talk with their hands. Thankfully, engineers at the Personal Robotics Group at MIT Media Lab have developed MeBot, the first telepresence robot with a head and arms that move. Operators sit in front of a camera and a special sensor tracks their head orientation. A screen on the robot shows the person’s face and moves on a “neck” to mimic his or her pose. MeBot’s arms are moved using a controller that resembles the bot’s actual limbs. It’s a pretty cool setup, and it makes a difference. Psych experiments performed by the developers showed that humans responded better to a telerobot with a dynamically moving body. That makes sense, and MeBot’s simple innovation of adding body language could help make telepresence an accepted way to cooperate with colleagues over long distances. Check out the robot in action in the clip from MIT below. That little bot is adorable! How could you not want to work with it?

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Willow Garage Creates Awesome Open Source Telepresence Robots

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by Aaron Saenz on February 4th, 2010
Texas alpha telepresence robots

Willow Garage just built 25 telepresence bots. Let the open source festivities begin!

Fans of open source robotics need look no further than Willow Garage. Not satisfied with merely creating an amazing robot platform that plugs itself in to recharge (PR2), they are also one of the driving forces behind an open source Robot Operating System (ROS). Now, Willow Garage has unveiled another ambitious project: telepresence robots. They recently finished building 25 of their Texas Alphas (TAs) – robots that allow workers to telecommute and command a dynamic representative thousands of miles away. The TAs are going to help with human-robot interaction research at Willow Garage and some are being lent out to other companies to test their feasibility in a non-robotics workplace. Looks like Willow Garage just jumped head long into the telepresence business and that could mean amazing open source development for the field. Check out videos of the TA in action below.

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Vu Tries to Undercut Cisco with Cheaper Telepresence

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by Aaron Saenz on January 28th, 2010
vu telepresence at CES 2010

The photo was taken in Las Vegas. The arm is in India. The words are legible. The price may be right: $3500.

A couple of months ago we discussed the decline of business travel and the rise of high quality video conferencing from companies like Cisco, HP, and Polycom. The trend of telepresence is on the rise, and Indian based Vu Technologies is hoping to snag a big share of the market by offering high quality video on regular high speed bandwidth. The total cost according to reps at CES: about $3500 per unit which includes camera and server. While that’s nearly a hundred times more expensive than Skype and a cheap webcam, it’s also one tenth (or one hundredth) of the price of a current Cisco system. Smaller businesses could now have access to professional video conferencing at a fraction of the cost. While it’s better known for making luxury TVs, Vu’s new telepresence may help usher in a new era of business where we don’t travel the world, we shrink the distance between us.

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Anybots Telepresence Robots Go into Mass Production

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by Aaron Saenz on January 25th, 2010

Can’t make that business meeting in another city? Send your robot instead. We’ve been keeping track of Anybots telepresence robots since they sent one of their QA bots to visit a Singularity University planning meeting. These armless human-sized bots on wheels let you remotely view and interact with people as well as exchange files. You can even let a crowd view the video from a QA by streaming it live through Justin TV. It’s the 21st century way to stay in contact or make a PR push without leaving the office. Up to now the QA hasn’t been openly available for purchase. That looks like it’s about to change. The company’s twitter feed just sent out a teaser photo along with the announcement that “Anybots is starting mass production!” Judging by the picture, there’s about to be a lot more QAs in the world.

anybots mass production

Are stacks of plastic exciting? You betcha. We're about to see a whole bunch more telepresence robots come to life thanks to Anybots.

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Cisco Telepresence Coming To Your Home Despite Alternatives

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by Aaron Saenz on January 7th, 2010

cisco-telepresence-at-homeI couldn’t be home for Christmas this year, so I video chatted with my family instead. The picture quality was a little spotty with breaks, freezes, and frequent ghosting. Still, the experience was passable and, best of all, it was free. Soon my video calls could get more expensive but a whole lot more life-like. According to Reuters, Cisco has just announced at CES 2010 that it will be adapting its Telepresence video conferencing for home use. Trials in homes will begin this Spring in the US and later in 2010 for France, partnered with Verizon and France Telecom respectively. Telepresence calls offer vastly superior quality to the current home webcam communicating programs like Skype, but require much greater bandwidth. Cisco will need to partner with ISPs as it expands into homes, so expect others to join the list after Verizon. If successful in bringing Telepresence to the residential market, Cisco could change the way we communicate but it faces stiff competition.

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The future is Nao (maybe)

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by Steven Wasick on January 5th, 2010
Nao is Alderbaran premier developmental robot.

Nao is Alderbaran's premier developmental robot.

If there were two shining promises made about what we would have in the future, they were the flying car and the household robot. Well here we are in the 2010’s and I commute on a bike and have to clean up after myself (the horror!). The Nao robot could be a huge step forward in correcting one of these problems.

Alderbaran robotics, the creators of the Nao, started with an audacious goal: create an autonomous, affordable, and feature-rich consumer robot. How autonomous and affordable Nao will be are open questions, but the robot is definitely feature-rich. And it could be coming to a robotics lab near you. Alderbaran will be sending out development units throughout 2010 and Nao will have open source software. Putting business aside, let’s not forget that the physical capabilities of the robot are simply dazzling. Check out the classic Nao video after the jump.

The bot also packs a pretty amazing amount of hardware into its 23in. tall frame. It has enough servo motors to give it 25 degrees of motion, several microphones, stereo speakers, two video cameras, built in wi-fi, and a CPU that allows it to do facial recognition and text-to-speech translation.

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Remote Controlled Robot Pet Sitter

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by Aaron Saenz on November 2nd, 2009
The Robot Pet Sitter could be remotely accessed so that you can play with your pets while away from home.

The Robot Pet Sitter could be remotely accessed via the internet so that you can play with your pets while away from home.

Okay, I rarely spend time looking at “concept machines” but this one just made me chuckle enough that I had to share it. In our hectic lives there is one group that constantly suffers from lack of attention: our pets. So what’s the solution – spending more time at home, or giving your pet a backyard, maybe even finding someone to help care for your pet? No, of course, not. That’s not technologically advanced enough. What your pet needs is a robotic sitter, one that you can control from anywhere in the world via WiFi. MintSelect, a technology concept community, has dreamed up their Robot Pet Sitter, a device that will let you speak to, watch, and even play fetch with your animal. Teach your pet to obey its robotic overlord just as it would obey you.

As far as I can tell, the Robot Pet Sitter would function almost exactly as a Rovio. Like that robot, the Pet Sitter would connect to your home WiFi network and allow you to access the device through a web browser. While I can’t speak to whether or not animals will enjoy interacting with robots, I do know that telepresence is a developing trend in technology. Remotely accessing your home, for security or pet soothing, is just the beginning. Once we are able to transmit sensation from a machine to a human (a capability known as haptics) people will feel what is happening to the robot they are operating. In essence, you will be able to interact with distant objects just as if you were there with them. That level of connectivity may make travel obsolete.
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Build Your Own Telepresence Robot – Sparky Jr.

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by Aaron Saenz on October 22nd, 2009

In the list of awesome things to do with your free time, “build a robot” has always been right up there with “make everyone love me” and “master time and space”. Now thanks to Sparky Jr, you can accomplish all three. Sparky Jr. is an open source robot that you can build in your home. It was designed by do-it-yourself guru Marquee Cornblatt. Besides looking cool, Sparky allows you to sit at a control computer and use a webcam to communicate via monitor and speakers on the bot, giving you a telepresence wherever the robot roams. Follow Cornblatt’s detailed instructions and you’ll soon have a machine that lets you be anywhere, anytime, and endear yourself to friends and strangers. Of course, accomplishing your awesome list comes with a price tag of $1300+ and many hours of hard work, but it might just be worth it. Check out the videos after the break to learn how to build a Sparky Jr. of your very own.

Sparky Jr is a telepresence robot that allows you to make remote video conference calls. It is also highly customizable.

Sparky Jr is a telepresence bot that allows you to make video conference calls. Build it in your own style.

Of course, Sparky Jr isn’t the first telepresence robot we’ve seen. Anybots is an amazing ROV (remotely operated vehicle) and Rovio is a fairly cheap retail device that you can use anywhere via the internet. What makes Sparky Jr. different from its competitors is that it’s completely open source and customizable. Cornblatt’s website guides you to the hardware you need, and provides the software free of charge, but it’s up to you to do all the construction. Any improvements you may make (in hardware or software) can then be shared with Cornblatt and he’ll place them on the site. This allows Sparky Jr. to evolve over time. Community directed improvements are at the core of open source technologies, and may prove to be a defining paradigm in molecular biology (via OpenWetWare), robotics (remember Willow Garage), general knowledge (sites like Wikipedia), and computer programming (Linux, and others).
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Is Surrogates Movie Getting Closer to Reality?

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by Aaron Saenz on August 7th, 2009

You know you live in a crazy age when blockbuster movies look like they might come true. Next month marks the debut of the scifi film Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis and adapted from Robert Vendetti’s comic series of the same name. The movie follows a police officer who lives in a future where everyone (including him) is a remote controlled android called a surrogate. You can feel everything that this robot does, but without any worries about danger. Pretty far-fetched, right?

Will the world of Surrogates come true?

Will the world of Surrogates come true?

Well, a new micro-documentary on Wired.com is questioning just how much fiction there is in this science. With commentary from the director and some key experts in the field, The Science-Fact Behind Surrogates is out to show that the technology we have today is laying the foundation for the reality of the film. Watch the micro-documentary video after the break.

Surrogates is set in the year 2054, when everyone stays at home and sends beautiful android versions of themselves out into the world. It’s the ultimate form of telepresence, and futurist Dr. James Canton believes it could happen in the next decade or so. Canton isn’t the only expert weighing in during the documentary. Anybots, which the hub covered previously, make robots that operate through telepresence and demonstrate that humans can already interact through their artificial minions.

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Up Close With the Telepresence Robot From Anybots

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by Keith Kleiner on March 30th, 2009

Can’t make it to a meeting thousands of miles away, but wish you could?  Need to be two places at once?  Perhaps you need the telepresence robot from Anybots.  This weekend while attending Singularity University’s second Curriculum Planning Meeting (CPM2) we had the pleasure of bumping into QA, the telepresence robot from Anybots.  Below is our short review of the robot, followed by an exclusive Singularity Hub video interview of Anybots engineer Benjie Nelson showing off the robot.

anybots_telepresence_robot_qa

This slick looking robot navigates a room, continuously streaming video and audio feeds of what it sees to one or more remote viewers.  Not only does the robot allow remote individuals to see what is going on, but it also allows remote individuals to interact with the remote location by sending information, such as audio, images, and pdf files.

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