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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

It's for mobile telepresence. E.g. you send this to the factory in China instead of flying there yourself. It has cameras and audio and a fancy laser pointer they built themselves. You drive it via the Internet from an ordinary computer.

It's much lighter than a Segway. Only 35 pounds.

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That would be a bit creepy though. Imagine a factory of chinese workers, all sewing and this this silent rolling monster drifts slowly by, and they all stiffen in fear and work extra hard...

Frankly the remote guys are probably a lot less frightening than the ones on the spot.

Especially after the people next to it figure out that nobody's actually watching the feed.

At this point, it's probably trivial to make it go past everybody every few days just to scare people, right?

That's the logical result of widespread adoption of this, isn't it? Similar to (most) security CCTV right now.

Either that, or elaborate "moon-landing" setups to trick the remote factory (or weapons) inspectors.

iRobot made something similar called the "coworker". It was a spectacular failure. It was shorter and ( i think ) a bit smarter about remote obstacle avoidance. They asked around $5K.

They never answered the question: why is this better than a conference call? This is doubly important considering it has no arms.

I'm certain there is a market for this or a similar kind of robot. It needs to have compelling remote presence, and it needs to be cheaper than $5K.

Adding up motors, computers, cameras, the chassis, plastic modling, etc. can get expensive fast, especially if you haven't ramped up production somewhere fast & cheap like China.

Why better than a conference call? It has to be it's mobility. (Although, didn't they mention it needed to be tethered? It has to be because it lacks batteries.)

I think that in situations where data needs to be sucked up in a mobile way but not in a way that the environment needs to be manipulated (no arms), it'll work. Well, when it gets batteries, it would.

You're thinking of the old model, Monty:

"Unlike monty, QA is 100% battery powered, and gets 4-6 hours of runtime on every charge. Monty's pneumatics required it to be tethered at all times. Also, its much lighter at around 35lbs. Monty is too heavy to pick up."

It doesn't have arms to open doors and probably can't go up stairs. Quadriplegic mobility isn't that enticing.

If it had arms, I could hire a housekeeper from anywhere in the world to sign in and tidy up my place.

That is Trevor's long-term plan, actually. Instead of exporting goods, countries will export labor.

Makes sense. Wondering what bottlenecks he is running into on the way? Is it that arms are hard to do affordably?

But does the display at the other end live up to the Yes Men's Management Leisure Suit?

(nsfw)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9Cs_UcTEE

A VC could have one in the office to make sure people are working. ;p

http://www.justin.tv/officecam

Who's the lazy one that lounges on the sofa? ;)

I've been thinking of swapping the sofa for a hammock actually... ;-)

Good call. Make sure you remember to have a minion fanning you with a palm leaf for good measure.

We could just tape a palm leaf to a QA.

We've all seen Speed! You could just put that on a loop.

Seems like those little observer robots on the Death Star:

http://www.hoylen.com/photos/2002-10-12-starwars/sw047.jpg

No bad spin intended. As far as use goes, that's what it reminds me of.

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