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Robotic Teleconferencing
Mike Elgan writes "Hewlett-Packard Labs unveiled to the press May 23 a system for
teleconferencing with lifelike realism.Called the BiReality remote communication system, the project involves a remote-controlled robot on one end, and a total-immersion environment on the other, giving the user the ability to roam hallways, hold conversations and interact remotely through the
robot."
I donno - how long are the cables (visible in the pic)? Of course, being only the second version, with "off the shelf" parts, it looks pretty interesting.
...a remote-controlled robot be build so you can "walk it" to the shop behind the corner, get your kid back home from school, go to work... Will two people never seeing each other send their robots to marry each other remotely? And then go to honeymoon, to Niagara Falls, to watch the views on monitors from home... Will a day come when leaving your house will be scarce and you'll be doing everything by controlling your robot? I don't really like this vision of future.
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...once the technology is refined and reliable:
Break into a car, put the robot at the wheel, made up as realistically as possible to resemble a human, flip the bird at the highway patrol, and hey, it's the ultimate real life police chase, except for the part at the end where the driver usually gets hauled off in handcuffs.
Especially good if your control feed is being repeated from a number of different locations and randomly phase-shifted, so as to throw off triangulation.
Real-life GTA, anyone?
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Concidering that half the dot com era's IT budget was spent on projectors and laser pens. I'm looking forward to see all the practical purposes of this ingenious machine. Is it possible to put it on hold or get it to bring coffe.
What if the person on the other end does something clumsy, boy does that sound expensive!
Is it at least possible to recycle it?
"I'm sorry I can't be here, but if you look to your left, you can see a big blue cube with a TV on it..."
Why do it in reality when you can do it in VR? Personally, I'd prefer to have video conferencing in a modified version of counterstrike or planetside; if they piss me off they get shot, etc etc. Or if it's an actual conference with people attending and 1 or 2 people attending virtually, give them a big screen and some software to let them control it, and you're set.
Although, you just know that the first one that's going to happen you're going to have one robot going and toppling the other ones over while the other ones attempt to whirr away at slow speed, only to be kicked by frightened workers who think the robot has eaten their boss or someone is going through the building planning a terrorist bombing. Afterall, you could probably put a face of bin-ladeon in their...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Well...besides the obvious comments about the OS crashing...and the robot possibly rolling into/over someone :P :P
;^)
:)
:)
(Obviously it would come to an immediate halt, but then again...it IS powered by an eeevil micro$oft product...so instead...it could go on a rampage, destroy buildings, search out it's maker, become part of the global computer defense network, go mad, develop an obsession with pinnochio, build an army of invincible shiny cyborgs, travel back in time, enslave humans and use them as power-sources...eh...nevermind
Eh...anyway...I was going to say that that wobot in the pictures looks a bit unstable to me...kinda top heavy and suffering from middle-age bloat (spare me the windoze jokes!
Nevermind crashing the OS, what if that (expensive?) machine keels over?
Hmmmm...to properly test this...we need to place one small child and/or one happy dog in the vicinity of this robot. Stand back and make sure you're wearing a helmet (and probably steel-capped boots - mind your toeses folks
Which reminds me:
A couple of years ago I watched some video footage on "America's funniest home-videos" (or some clone of that god awful program) where a remote controlled (friendly looking) robot entered a room where a whole bunch of kids where playing with toys. Obviously there was a hidden camera filming the whole thing. The producers thought it would be funny to have the kids talk to/interact with their crappy robot.
The robot was about the same size and shape as the one in the article, but instead of blue, it was completely red with a 'traditional' square robot head. (square eyes, mouth, antennas, the works
Now here's the important bit:
Much to the producers surprise (and delight) the children, upon seeing the robot enter the room, all started screaming and crying, and proceeded to assault the robot and pelt it with their toys!
Now imagine your kids at home, playing with their toys...and in comes Wobby the wobot - with DADDY's HEAD! "Hel-lo chil-dren!" Aaaugh!
Years of therapy...