From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Mon May 26 2003 - 21:10:28 MDT
Yes, and your avatar's job is safe till its outsourced to a cheaper
costing overseas robot! Har Har Har! :-D
Working Remotely, Robots in Place
By Elisa Batista http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58961,00.html
02:00 AM May. 26, 2003 PT
PALO ALTO, California -- How would you feel about sitting across a
conference table from a robot remotely controlled by a colleague who could
not make the meeting?
Fears of severe acute respiratory syndrome and terrorism, combined with
drastically reduced travel budgets, mean more companies are considering
video conferencing as an alternative to face-to-face meetings.
But Hewlett-Packard scientists say the most natural way to "meet" when
people are not face to face is to use robots.
The scientists, who work out of HP's research laboratory in Palo Alto,
were recently on hand to prove it, showing off the prototype for a robot
that could navigate through the halls of a building, lower itself down to
eye level at a conference table and even mix and mingle with associates as
if it were a person.
Hewlett-Packard doesn't consider it a robot, but a "surrogate," since it
would have the face and the voice of the person who remotely controls it.
"It's not really a robot," said HP fellow Norm Jouppi. "Robots decide what
they want to do by themselves. This is not a robot any more than your car
is a robot. You control it the same way you would your car, only
remotely."
While HP emphasized that the surrogate is a research project that will not
necessarily become an actual product, the researchers said they used
available technology to construct it.
The purple plastic surrogate, approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall, has a
wheeled base with circuitry and a power outlet. HP said a future design
would eliminate the wires and incorporate an 802.11a wireless chip and
sensors so the surrogate could move around without bumping into walls.
The machine is armless. Jouppi said an earlier prototype with arms could
press elevator buttons and even shoot a Nerf ball into a basketball net, but some people didn't like it.
The robot's "head" is a four-way computer monitor that displays images of
the head of the person remotely controlling the surrogate.
That person must sit in a small room with screens and projectors all
around, maneuvering the surrogate with a joystick. With microphones
surrounding the robot's head, the remote worker can listen to individual
conversations at the table and even turn to certain people to provide eye
contact and input.
The control room creates the meeting virtually for the person controlling
the robot.
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