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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."
Can't it be both?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Cheap internet access whithout insane limits...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
actually, I can totally see the point of what they're trying for. The absolute most difficult part of a teleconference is managing when/how people speak, and all the nonverbal cues we use in 'real' meetings to handle this. Videoconferencing doesn't usually fix the issue if you've got more than two sites. Some sort of reliable technology that could give me real non-verbal feedback as to what's going on in a meeting for managing speakers would be awesome. Though I have a hard time believing that any system could currently really achieve anything that wasn't just another approach to strictly-moderated (which you can do just fine with text-chat during a telecon)
Also, obligatory: "You're in my spot"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Have you done much teleconferencing? The extended, awkward silences as nobody knows who is supposed to be talking are a real problem. Not a serious problem mind you, but there is definitely room for improvement.
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.
Are you saying smart people can't have dumb ideas? How about Vista? Apple pippin? MSFT Bob? Smart people can have dumb ideas just like everyone else Mikey. BTW how many UIDs did you end up going to before you switched handles? Just curious.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.