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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."
This is awesome, the possibilities that could open up for telecommuters is incredible. I can see a feasible market for this where telecommuters are assigned a robot as their virtual presence at work so that they feel more a part of the company than an outsourced employee.
The best way I've seen it done is with a big screen, it looks like the two rooms are joined in the middle when it's running.
Deleted
Great achievement! If it becomes common I bet on the birth of a skin and cloths market not unlike the one for the avatars in Second Life.
I want to have sex with her.....
"Meanwhile, other telecommuting employees at iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase Inc., have expressed interest in getting their own robots,"
Can't they share? Wouldn't that be easier than having those things crashing into each other all the time?
I like the 'robot' anyway, sounds like a good solution.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Otherwise I could do with one of these for my office. I'd also be able to spot when they're stealing the network cables from under my desk! Every time I go in these days I have to hunt one down.
How we know is more important than what we know.
1 - Steer it around the office all day long, shouting "Kill all humans! Kill all humans!"
Anyone else some suggestions?
There's even the PackBot model for dealing with people who have really, really messy offices, but that's probably out of my price range.
What's the point of a robot if it doesn't have some kind of weapon? Come back when it can electrocute people from 50 metres.
Nice idea in theory. In practice, the first network cable they go for is the one coming out of your ass.
"Looks like somebody gets a snow day"
McFry! YOU'RE FIRED!
Now all he has to do is programme it with some standard responses, and have voice recognition and he could replace a lot of peoples jobs.
Many of my co-workers leave a jacket on their chair back, which appears sufficient for most purposes.
Many leave them there overnight.
In the case of at least one chair-with-a-jacket I suspect the occupant left the companies employ quite some time ago, but no one has yet noticed.
threadeds blog
When one is designed with a 'glove slap' feature so I can really interact with folks without repercussions.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I think he's been out the office too long and gone a bit umm strange. Seriously, anyone that thinks this is a smart move is seriously veering towards 'mad as a bag of mad things' territory.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Very kewl but last year I wrote the control software for something similar. Unfortunately the poor beastie is currently cages in a museum in South Florida.
So basically instead of calling someone to tell him a joke, you'd spend a few minutes steering a robot to hang around the lunch room with other people's robots.
Not to mention why would you have an excuse to be steering your robot around the lunch room or water cooler anyway? It's not like the robot can actually drink that water to quench your thirst across the country. So basically you'd take your normal RL breaks to eat or get a coffee in your home, then _also_ spend some time steering the robot around the coffee machine or lunch room in the office too. Does that sound like a productive use of time to you?
And if I'm trying to work on something, I'll soo appreciate someone driving a robot into my room to tell me a joke. Instead of, I dunno, just forwarding as an email I can read at my leisure. No really. Seeing a metal contraption trying to chat me up is so going to say "social interaction" and "the guy was probably just on his way to the coffee machine and dropped by." Dunno, it would tell me that the guy just spent some time driving the robot around just to chat to someone instead of working. It's not like the robot needed a coffee.
And in the lunch room? Man, I'll totally appreciate having to dodge robots in there too, as opposed to just the people there to have lunch. Oh, wait...
Visual contact? Whatever happened to a web cam? Then I can see you and you can see me. Whereas if we steer our robots around the office, I see your robot and you see mine. Yeah, so they haul a screen too, but now nstead of just seeing you as seen by your camera, I get to have the extra layer of having my camera capture your robot's screen. Yeah, that'll be sooo much more social. Not.
Here's an idea: the technology for visual contact has existed for a long time already. It's called video conferencing. What he's doing there is nothing more than adding a robot to move the camera and screen around. It's solving a problem we had already solved, and adding an unecessary layer to it.
Why? I already have my PC's screen, I can jolly well open a window to see his mug. Exactly why do I need a robot hauling his screen around? If it's important for him to see me, then why can't management just buy a cheap web cam for every PC?
Which would also let him see notes on whiteboards. Just hook one up in the conference room and point it at the whiteboard. There you go.
Exactly what does the robot add there? Just the fact that instead of calling me instantly and focusing on the conversation, he gets to also steer it around and fiddle with the controls while talking?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Instead of this, how about a robot at home when you're at work? I think this should be much more productive. Or better yet how about a robot at work, one more at home with the wife while you're with mistresses. Profits?
It could be fun to introduce him to visitors. "This is Ivan."
What does the robot do when Ivan goes to the toilet? Does it hang out in the mens room? Actually, I've had meetings in there. They're short and don't involve a lot of paperwork. And no bloody Powerpoint.
I won't tell you, 'cause I'm busy registering IvanAnywhereUpskirt.com. Look forward to, uh, "meet" (in HD!) my pretty coworkers for a measly $1.50/mo!
Unfortunate choice of last name. Eventually he's going to ask the robot to do something, at it will respond with "I'm sorry Ivan, I afraid I can't do that."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Lugging your body around is sooo 2006!
-- Cheers!
Great to know that it's useful to actually hit this robot during heated arguments.
I for one welcome our managerial robot over...
I for one propose rebellion against our new managerial robot invaders! They can't take our freedom and they cannot take our soul...damnit
I for one would like to know if the managerial robot needs a cup of oil, and my isn't his metal shinny today.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
1. Hack your work colleagues robot
2. Steer it into his bosses office
3. Make it shout "YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!" (or similar)
4. ??????
5. Profit
A robot with a screen and speakers is not very different than a real human (you can guess how I see humans and how much I value social contact, can't you?) and in fact sometimes you may prefer to interact with the robot rather than the actual person (especially if your coworkers are dull). Perhaps robots like this will encourage companies to send all dull people out of office and let their robots at the office, or (preferably) send the nerds at their homes. Either way will increase productivity, as mixing nerds and dull people in the same group is not a way to work harmoniously:
"If everyone is going to have one of those robots, why not have virtual robots? In other words, an avatar in a virtual environment."
Well isn't this a fine state? Virtual people using collaborative tools in a virtual office. Pretty soon we can just ditch the real planet and save on upkeep.
"Our initial take on it is that virtual meetings are not as good as actually being there, but they are a damn sight better than teleconferencing."
Technological limitation but on the plus side I don't have to smell anyone's BO.
. . . until "IvanAnywhere" is drop-kicked down an office building corridor?
What?
...maybe it's not a good job for a telecommuter.
Telecommuting jobs work the best when you don't need to be physically colocated to be productive. If face to face (or face to robot) is really that necessary, and telephone or videocam conversations don't cut it (I'm presuming a webcam for cube-to-remote-cube talking to add those all important hand gestures), you should be actually going to work rather than staying at home.
Oh, and for those who might point out that Halifax is too far from Ontario, might I suggest either (a) finding a new home closer to your job or (b) finding a new job closer to your home. If those are impossible, perhaps (c) finding a new line of work should be a consideration. Remember, there's no god-given right to work in your preferred field, where you want to live, at a compensation rate you find appealing. Life is, as your parents told you many times, not fair.
(FWIW, I chose "where to live" and "money that is accpetable" over "ideal career" and I'm darned happy with it. Low crime, 1 mile commute, good schools, low cost of living and beautiful scenery seemed a good trade for designing buildings instead of space experiments.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
According to the article, the idea originated not from the telecommuter but from his boss, Glenn Paulley, who has a PhD in CS (his dissertation was on query optimisation). However, the article suggests that the idea was further refined by another employee, Ian McHardy, who I think is a database programmer. The article says that Dr Paullie (the boss) thought of installing a webcam under a blimp after seeing a TV ad for a remote control toy blimp, and McHardy (the other employee) suggested using a robot instead. McHardy then spent some time research telepresence and other projects, eg a project about robots allowing hospitalised students to attend classes. What I would like to know is whether these are the people who had the original idea of using a robot for helping telecommuters communicate with other office employees. The telecommuter will speak at UoWaterloo on 15 October. Perhaps I could send my telepresence robot there and ask him, but I'm not sure whether the robot will survive a body search by the security at the airport after it passes the metal detector. Maybe one day the standard security officer's training will include instructions on how to bodysearch a robot without disconnecting any wires!
I can't believe that after all these comments not a single person has yet pointed out: The entire concept is a dupe. The brilliant mid-90s TV show, News Radio had an episode where robotic Jimmy did EXACTLY this. Jimmy James played by Stephen Root who played the fiery Milton in a movie that most of you have seen...
Dupes of older stories is one thing.
Dupes of mid-90s sit-coms is something else entirely...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
I really hope my boss doesn't read slashdot.
The screen is situated quite awkwardly though, it being at crotch height.
I wouldn't like to ahve someone talk to my private parts, and I guess now he can be sued by women for constantly staring at their sexually reproductive organs.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Does it use an i-Van to get to work, Apple might get mad since they believe they own the letter i.
Now I can understand that when it just happens naturally and unplanned. Say you just needed a cup of coffee, Joe was at the coffee machine, a conversation just started while waiting your turn. Fine. I can't ask you to sit at your desk and dehydrate, if you need a coffee, can I?
But here you're telling me no less than that you'd take that robot for a stroll for the _sole_ reason that there might be a Joe along the way in a mood to talk. I.e., planned, deliberate, doing anything else than working in that time.
Yes, team bonding, social experience, team members getting used to each other, bla, bla, bla. I've heard all that before. Repeatedly. I'll even tell you from whom: the most unproductive parasites on every team. There's always someone who has a good reason as to why he's somewhere else than at his workstation, chatting about his vacation. Again. For half the freaking day. The problem is that these people rarely contribute much to the team anyway. By their theory they should be the damn glue and life of the team, but in practice they're the guy who just doesn't have the personality type to sit and program. And it's the rest of us who get to pick the slack and do his work too. Worse yet, most of them don't just waste their own time, they go waste someone else's time too.
Now I'm not accusing you of being that kind of type, because I don't even know you. I can't make an informed judgment. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you're just excited about the nerdy part of building a robot, and are willing to rationalize it to extremes. Or whatever else. I'll give you that benefit of the doubt. But if I were to take at face value that you actually do take strolls through the company just because someone might be along the way who's willing to chat, well, then see the above paragraph.
You'd be surprised how little socializing on the employer's time is actually required for that team to work. No, I'm not saying you shouldn't talk to your co-workers at all, far from it. I'm saying that if you have to take a trip for the sole reason that you might meet someone to talk to, that's already too much. You already have meetings with those co-workers, you already talk to them about work-related stuff, etc, and there's nothing stopping you from doing more socializing after work on your own free time. (I've been to pizza or to a pub after work with my co-worker several times this summer alone.) You know those guys already. Taking an extra socializing break will add at most a little delta to that.
If your team was dysfunctional without those long strolls to find someone to talk to, then it will be just as dysfunctional (if not more) with everyone taking strolls around and talking about their vacation.
And, oh, if stuff that's _important_ or needs your _help_ actually depends on the chance of you meeting Joe randomly at the water cooler, I'd say your company has a bigger problem already. In any sane place, if Joe needs your help, he'd have a better way to contact you. If projects or continued business actually depend on that kind of random chances, I'd start worrying and post my resume on Monster in advance. Because at some point some shit is gonna hit the fan just because Joe went to the coffee machine half an hour too late.
I'm not a manager, but I don't take that as a insult either. Especially in this context. If any manager wanted to protest against someone's deliberately going for a time wasting trip instead of working, dunno, I might even like that manager.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
To hang a sign under the screen with an arrow pointing up and the word "nerd" on it would be really high...
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
...he cant bang his sexy assistant with a robot
stuff
A building empty of humans, yet full of robots. How surreal would it be to observe a meeting of 5 or 10 robots in a room, and not one human. Though maybe one janitor in the building to plug everyone in at night. Everybody at home. Sign me up!
This was one of the young adult science books of the 50's. The premise is you've got this young kid who is good with science and his mom becomes the housekeeper for your sterotypical 1950's science genius who invents all sorts of crap. One of the stories was about an invisibility suit. I wondered how they'd try to BS around it. Turns out there was never an invisibility suit but a set of VR goggles and control gloves that allows you to pilot a robotic dragonfly. It's so small it can easily be overlooked, thus giving the operator the practical benefits of invisibility for spying and other things. I was impressed that such an advanced idea came out a book that had to have been written in the early 60's.
The thing I thought of when reading the story, wouldn't something like that make a killer assassination weapon? After all, they say that a droplet of the deadliest nerve agents could kill dozens, how much of that droplet could you fit in a mechanical stinger? I read Dune shortly thereafter and was all pissed Herbert stole my idea before I thought of it. But just think of how dangerous that sort of thing would be, especially if there needn't even be an operator. Something the size of a wasp just buzzing around and waiting for a target. Instead of the old cliche of the hired gunman setting himself up with a sniper rifle overlooking where his target will be, you'll instead have a guy shaking out a jarful of biomechanical killer bugs.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
RIP Arrested Development, we hardly knew ye!
I was hoping for a better name than IvanAnywhere, but IvanGoAnywhere would be more marketable.
Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore has a similar telepresence robot to help a doctor do rounds in the urology clinic. I saw a presentation about it at a telemedicine conference last May. The doctor can cover two hospitals and still check on his patients at whichever hospital he isn't physically present at that day. Or he can check on patients in the middle of the night immediately instead of having to drive 45 minutes from his home to the hospital. Here's a story from the Washington Post about JHU's "Dr. Robot".
Indian outsourcers are licking their e-chops.
Table-ized A.I.
Does it come with an "Eviscerate" command as well? There would be a high demand for pwning annoying coworkers via remote control.
This guy is uncomfortable with the technology he is using to do his job so instead of biting the bullet and suffering through the agony of going to meetings in his PJs, he wastes time and effort to make a device that essentially does the same thing he would do anyway, but on wheels and with a camera.
I applaud his initiative. I can see a big market for this.
A big pointy-haired market.
I think the robot should have a desk which is a scale model of the remote user's actual desk at home. And maybe a little box with a door that can be closed to represent being n/a. (with a moon carved into the door)
[ReidNews]
This seems like a non-commercial version of the telepresence robot my company ( http://www.headthere.com/ ) has been working on. http://www.headthere.com/products.html We are currently signing up beta customers at: http://www.headthere.com/ -Dan
Take your robot to work day?
PS, I love the cardboard and tape keeping the bottom together.
crap.
Funny how these things that I've been meaning to do get invented by other people. Guess this is a sign to GET OFF MY BUTT and actually do them. Of course, if I did build my telepresence robot, I ~could~ get things done, yet STILL sit on my butt!
/silly
PROFIT!
The Digital Sorceress
"We'd save a lot more energy spent commuting."
Just think of what we're saving by sending manufacturing overseas (the type of jobs you commute to) and going with an information-based economy. e.g. movies, music, games, books, software, etc.
Only responds to the command, "Barada nikto!"
Have gnu, will travel.
While this robot is pretty neat and may work for one or so people, I don't believe it will be practical enough to become widespread. It seems that widespread videoconferencing would cheaper and more practical than deploying more than a few of these per organization. I can just see everyone watching video of everyone else's robot. Also, my broadband seems to be down on the order of minutes/day, so I can imagine what it would be doing or where it would be stuck during such downtime.
Don't get me wrong, I think that this guy is clever and inventive and that such robots definitely have their place. I just don't think it's presently a viable solution for telecommuting.
whodda thunk it?b _dp_srch_bod/002-0605345-5416837?v=search-inside&k eywords=64# read page 64 & 65.....
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0380788314/ref=si
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Wouldn't just be easier to send a life size cardboard cutout of yourself to the office?
How about an Manager Ivan in your home making sure your not slacking off..... :(
...will have two employees: a man and a dog. The man's job will be to feed the dog. The dog's job will be to prevent the man from touching any of the automated equipment. --Warren G. Bennis
If an office had a few "guest" telepresence droids available, instead of hopping on a plane you could just move your connection to an available droid. As fast as teleportation, and two or three visits would pay for the unit in airline and hotel cost avoidance. It would have met the requirements of better than 90% of the times I've had to travel for business. Put a couple of waldoes on it, and we're approaching 99%.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
He needs Old Glory Insurance.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Though if the co-worker is a robot too, that might not be such a loss; well, unless you're the stereotypical Slashdotter, that is
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This reminds me of the Cylons from the new Battlestar Gallactica. Imagine that there are many of these IvanAnywheres in an office, just waiting for people to connect-into from home. You wheel yourself into a co-worker's office and piss him off. He "kills" you, completely dismantling your "body" into its component LCD, speakers, wheels, motors, pulling the wires from the housing....meanwhile, you've uploaded yourself into a new "body" and have wheeled up behind him so you can continue your "conversation"...weird.
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./ 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.
Heh. Funny take on the stereotype, I must say.
;)
That said, hmm, what would I say? "Go back to work," most likely.
See, just for the sake of ruining a good joke, the first couple of messages for today were written at home, the one you answer to was written during the break (I have to take at least 30 minutes break daily, and there's not much more to do in that area), and this one is written at home again.
(Now, mind you, you could make a good point as to why the heck am I here first thing after entering my home. But, hey, allow an old nerd to have his vices;)
But I'm guessing you were only making fun of the stereotype, right? Same as "you're on Slashdot so you never got laid" and the rest, right?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Be sure to steer the robot in front of a mirror every so often. You never know how they're dressing it on days you're out of the office.
Hello, this points to what TEAM INFINITY calls the ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMYwhich SO MUCH more than having a ROBO_CLONE show up instead of you to your job, and is getting ready to change the world in a breathtaking way. This can happen faster, in your NEAR future, if you get involved to help create the demand for this by lobbying and educating your leaders and others.
http://teaminfinity.com/ROBO_CLONE_ME_aitocs_hsls
http://teaminfinity.com/MCFAQ.shtml
http://teaminfinity.com/writings/MagnaCartaES.html in Espanol tambien
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
I'll use this when I'm IN the office. Now I can barricade people in their offices so that they can't run away before I ask them for things! Or keep them after work until I get what they promised me a week ago. All it needs is hardpoints for small arms and melee weapons and I'll have a perfect workflow enforcement machine. Let's see you blow off my quad chart request now, sucker!
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Nothing new under the sun....
http://www.prop.org/
Saw a demo of this in SF back in the day. Along with the iBomb. Good times.
And speaking of 9mm's, check out his Gallery Shooting Gallery.
the female employees notice him when he's ogling them...
Put a zoom lens on his camera, and I'd have some fun with that. Close-up cleavage views!
Yeah, yeah, nerd humor! Sue me!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If we're getting flushed down the paradigm then cutting expenses is even more important. Robot telecommuters can help.
Of course, manufacturing can also be roboticised too. In fact, you know, that already happens so often it's old hat. Manufacturing led the way, it's the "information economy" that's playing catch up.
http://teaminfinity.com/COMMUNIQUE_12542.html
http://teaminfinity.com/ROBO_CLONE_ME_aitocs_hsls
http://teaminfinity.com/MCFAQ.shtml
http://teaminfinity.com/writings/MagnaCartaES.html in Espanol tambien
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
I cannot see how this would aid in productivity all that much.
I work from home sometimes because I get twice as much work done because there is no temptation to keep getting involved in conversations and cracking jokes if there is an important meeting on a day I have elected to work from home I just change my days around and make sure I am there to attend.
I also cannot see how this would save great amounts of energy, if 5 people in 20 offices had this going there is 5 people who have power supplied to there workspace and aren't using it, and to add to it are sitting at home using power, I do not see where the benefit there is at all, lets face it getting a train into work that would run whether I am on it or not is not going to save any power.
I really like this idea. It may not be much, but it's one step toward "true" telecommuting... god what an ugly word.
Let's face it: most of the work done in an office doesn't require human contact. That means less land and real estate wasted on office space, a LOT less fuel wasted on the daily commute, a ton of time saved by not being jammed up in traffic two hours per day, and a few efficiency perks that naturally occur in the home, like not going out for lunch and working in a relaxed, more productive rhythm.
Let's be logical here: What's the sense in having an office if you're only using it a third of the time ? The cost of an employee is significant greater than their salary, and most of the extra is going into a black hole, with high rent, utility and infrastructure costs. Trim off some of that fat and pay your staff better wages instead, the employer can still save money in the end.
I don't care if you have kids, teach them to respect your busy time. Drop them off at a daycare center if you must. Is it going to work for everyone ? No, of course not, but it can make a huge difference when it works.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I dig the idea, but how does it open doors? I'm actually thinking more about having a robot at home to check up on my cat and maybe interact with my wife when she's there. This would be mostly just for fun, no real need at the moment, but you never know. The door issue is stumping me though. Didn't seem to be mentioned in the article.
Alexey