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Bell Labs Builds Cheap Telepresence 'Robots'
schliz writes "Alcatel-Lucent's research arm, Bell Labs, is building low-cost robots that represent remote participants in meeting rooms. Researchers hope it will address the issue of the natural, non-verbal 'voting mechanism,' by which people determine who should speak based on who most people are looking at. The technology will likely be priced in the 'hundreds of dollars,' rather than the tens of thousands that the likes of Cisco and Polycom charge for high-end telepresence rooms."
Besides that though, what is the point of having a robotic "remote presence" for a meeting? What's wrong with a a telephone or even videos? I think that those researchers have been watching to many movies.
Can't it be both?
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Cheap internet access whithout insane limits...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Re-purpose them to inflict pain on people at the other end of the meeting?
Perhaps my dream of being able to punch people over the internet is closer to being realised?
Also, obligatory: "You're in my spot"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It would be more interesting if they created a solution with eye tracking that lit up counter LEDs in front of the people in the board room, or one of the monitors. That seems like it would be far more high tech and efficient, and if done right would be pretty easy to understand/use. It would also work for the remote users - not just the boardroom participants - since they'd have their LEDs light up on remote location when people were focusing on them, giving a good indication that they had the floor to talk.
Is the robot "face" screen going to be showing the live video of the person's face? If so, since presumably you don't have a Steadicam operator staying directly in front of each human being represented by robots at all times, this is going to look weird. It will be hard to even keep your face in frame as you naturally move around, swivel your chair, etc. Even if your face can somehow be properly framed, the front of your robot face (which itself swivels) will keep showing the sides of your face as you turn to look at various people.
This can be avoided at the great expense of losing the live video of the person--you can just put a static picture of the person's face on the bot, but this seems a big step back from a regular videoconference--you can't see the person's facial expressions.
Not to mention, this enhances a SINGLE nonverbal body language feature (direction of head pointing) while utterly destroying all other nonverbal information you get from a plain old videoconference, including overall posture, hand gestures, etc. The robot can't fold its arms, make a gesture, tilt its head side to side, etc.
I think this idea is quite a stretch.
Anyone else think of big bang theory?
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
The future of hardware oriented garage startups is robotics. You know how Apple and Michael Dell etc. started out building computers .. well that's past. But it's still possible to build a physical product in your garage (besides software) .. and that's a robotic device.
Talkie Toaster.
#DeleteChrome
Personally, I'd want my robot stand-in to look like Crow. But I could understand some people preferring to have a Dalek represent them.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
DALEK'S AREN'T ROBOTS! There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We still dont have affordable video conference phones.
How about creating a Video conference standard and forcing the world to adhere to it instead of the fragmented mess we have now?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Did you ever take acid? Just hearing about these things makes me want to go find some.
And that's because this is not a "high-end telepresence room"; it's a "low-cost camera and screen that swivels on a set of robotic shoulders, and sits at a meeting table with physical attendees." Apples and oranges.
From the article :
Bouwen highlighted the value of a “turn-taking mechanism” that determines who should be next to speak.
In person, two people who begin to speak to a group at the same time tend to take their cues from the direction in which most group members are looking.
Those subtle cues are lost in current videoconferences, Bouwen said.
Note the subtle shift from telepresence to videoconference. The whole point of telepresence is that these sorts of cues ("gaze awareness," in the industry) are not lost. Polycom, Cisco, etc., are very aware of this and work hard to make this happen.
I don't think these sort of robots would replace telepresence rooms, but would be used (as the article says) in meetings with only one remote participants.
Oh, and robots like this are already on the market.
Just 2 or 3 fixed wide angle cameras in the conference room, automatic identification of speakers in the video, and text-only transcripts or video annotated with subtitle-like real time text for people who are just observing and don't have a headset. This is also an archive recording of the meeting. Robotic cameras in a conference room would just be a playful annoyance.
Will require a robot that can fall asleep.
...building low-cost robots that represent remote participants in meeting rooms.
My employer already buys these from India.
OK, moderators, cut the guy some slack. Yes, he should have said "...from various offshore locations where under-skilled workers are cheap and plentiful...", but since India has pretty much cornered that market, it's probably not fair to jump to the conclusion that it was intentionally racist.
I was just going to ask if that would be one of the options. Because if they actually use a system "by which people determine who should speak based on who most people are looking at" you know the guy who springs for the giant slab with huge glowing letters on it is going to get to speak all the time.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I eagerly await the "EXTERMINATE!" emoticon.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.