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."

Comments

Video conferencing no use?

[Colin Smith]

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.

Re:Why don't they share?

[JaredOfEuropa]

If everyone is going to have one of those robots, why not have virtual robots? In other words, an avatar in a virtual environment. That's precicely what I am involved in at the moment; we're experimenting with virtual conferences in (please don't laugh) Second Life. 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 (which sits way down on the list somewhere between getting a root canal treatment, and dropping a kitchen knife on your bare foot pointy side down). They also give much more of a sense of "presence" than videoconferencing. Plus, they allow for teambuilding events as well.

Sadly my suggestion for renting a virtual meeting room in Sauron's tower (in Lord of the Rings Online) was voted down. Oh well...