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Telepresence Store Staffed Remotely Using Robots
Molly McHugh writes: What better way to sell telepresence technologies than having the store employees themselves appear via robot? At the Beam store in Palo Alto, Calif., no human salespeople physically appear, only robots. Users appear on the 17-inch display and control the robot via keyboard, mouse, or Xbox controller. Beam can roll as fast as two miles per hour. People behind the screen control the Beam through their computers, and two wide-angle cameras attached to the top of the bot lets them see everything happening around the store. It’s a bit eerie, watching floating heads tool around and talk to people in this video, and the customers’ react to the Beam with confusion and wonder.
Wish more companies consistently bought into their own message. Cisco employees should be able to work from home from any place in the world, right??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J8rbD7KihQ
Cut out the expensive electronics, just have staff walk the floor in person. This is too close to uncanny valley for me.
(Well, It was "aimed" at kids.. but I wonder...)
"Hey kids, this must be your dad-- I didn't know he was a talking head!"
Prof Membrane shows up as the floating head just as often (if not more often) than not.
Does that include the security guards?
I think the point is they're eating their own dog food, that is, showing the clients that what they're selling works. It's obviously more of a hassle than having physical people, but the message would be clear. Whether the actual effect of such marketing effort is positive or not, remains to be seen.
the game
At the Beam store in Palo Alto, Calif., no human salespeople physically appear, only robots.
From what I can tell Best Buy beat them to it by 10+ years...
Do you have ESP?
It could have its uses, some stores have a significant issue. Their employees can't be where they need them to be, you have to overstaff all of your stores because of the short term rushes that come in and even then sometimes its not enough to completely cover demand. With something like this you could have a base number of flesh an blood employees that can handle average customer demand and a few telepresence employees who "move" from store to store to handle rushes. The issue of course is that these things are only visual/verbal interactive, they can't take money, examine receipts, move items, etc. The current design could only handle part of the interaction, figuring out what a customer wants/needs. Every thing else would have to be handed off to one of those flesh and blood employees.
How long until they start using it to do what was previously impossible, outsourcing retail jobs?
And who knows if the guys are wearing pants or not when they're working from home? All we see is their face!
Always ask for a saleswoman.
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I have wanted to build a remote torso for years. It is a torso (duh) with robotic arms. Basically whenever you need a plumber, a dishwasher, a doctor, or a computer tech, you would take your Torso® out of the closet and place it in the desired area where it would be controlled by an expert and complete its tasks without the need for anyone traveling to your home. After many nightmares about a chef stabbing me to death when I didn't complement him on his chicken pot pie, I decided to ditch the whole idea and hope no one else picks it up.
It's more efficient because the bosses can now hire sales people from cheaper cities or even cheaper countries but the selling price will be the same as if the sales person were hired locally (i.e. no discount).
> having the store employees themselves appear via robot?
So this shop is owned by Kraftwerk?
(But they will still need The Model to appear in their TV ads, though maybe they could just hire Hatsune Miku for a spot nowadays.)
Can US congress adopt this? Just think of the perks:
Less ability to stonewall
Back-room deals are more difficult
Lobbyist deals are more difficult
Probably prevents stupidity congregating
This reminds me a lot of Japan. In the 100Yen Kaitan (conveyor Sushi) places they don't have on site managers. They have the master (the chef) and a waitress. To keep costs low they have one manager who watched the stores via Webcams placed everywhere. The manager directs multiple stores via what they seen on the webcams and if there is a complaint they're connected via a video call.
And when they breakdown, the little oompa loompas come out and whisk away the failed robots for repair, all while singing their happy little bits of wisdom!
Life is not for the lazy.
So, the person operating the telepresence robot could very well be in India, or Japan or Botswana. And they are signed in and running a "robot" in the USA, taking the place of a US worker or (insert any other country here.)
I can only hope this will resolve to the conclusion that these would then be considered people working in the USA, and would require a visa, and that the robot operators must be in the same country or have a visa to work in this country.
Extrapolate one more level, and I believe the next logical conclusion is that the people in overseas call centers who help people in the USA via technology are also "dialed in" and therefore require visas.
It's possible that this can bring sanity back to offshoring jobs.
Sent from my ENIAC
Talk about eat your own dog food.
Now if only I could think up a reason to own such a device - and get it past budget approval (aka wife) -- I'd be all in.
getting a storefront property in Palo Alto on University Ave was an expensive investment. From what I hear, they aren't doing very well, having to come out with their own competition in the form of a lower-model bot 1/20th the cost of their original bot. There's just a lot of competition driving the whole industry down.
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