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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??
To be fair, Cisco is beginning to work like that.
The Cisco Systems executives remotely work from their yatch and the Cisco Systems workers remotely work from India.
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?