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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."
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 ...
Art is the mathematics of emotion
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.htmhere )