Trevor must be half insane, but that's not the reason why.

I've gathered that long term goal is telepresence robots that can enable transcontinental labor arbitrage. That has the potential to make Trevor, at least in the developed world, one of the most despised people alive. Talk about disruptive.

And to tell someone to connect lines A through G in this shape, when there are, say, 30 on the board? A doodle + screen works slightly, but certainly not optimally. And even if the laser-drawer can only manage a fairly small amount of detail, it lets you do at least part of an idea, let them see it / trace it, and then a later part, all lined up however you please. The screen's even pretty small, so it's not like you'd be able to show your masterpiece on it all at once either.

Anything non-projected break down any time you've got a large scale - what's an efficient way to point out a sparse mesh between 20 objects on a whiteboard? Point to one, and then the next which it connects to, lather-rinse-repeat to 40 points (more if it's a directional graph), or draw 20 lines and leave them up for people to peruse simultaneously? People just can't remember that many things at once, so you'd rely on someone to marker in your lines... to be erased if you come up with something better? Even changing a single line means several dots + waiting for someone to walk over and do it for you, instead of just changing what's displayed.

And how about completing a circuit diagram? Have fun pointing out a resistor, inductor, and XOR gate[1], dot-by-dot, or showing any complex replacement in a number of sketches + several points showing where each connects. Even if you're only able to draw a couple at a time, being able to draw them in place is a huge efficiency boost.

edit:

Or designing in groups: crowd around the 'bot to look at the screen, while you-or-they are unable to see the board, every time you have input that can't be elaborated by a single dot + words. The time it takes you to sketch something and hold it up to a webcam is the same as or longer than it would take to make those lines displayed, but then everyone can see it at once, as you intended it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Circuit_elements.svg

I'd love it. One of my profs has one, but it's mildly crummy, and I've never yet seen a good one nor an open source one. Not that I've been looking.

Know of any good ones? ie, fast + network access for shared whiteboarding?