Meet The Double (YC S12), A Teleconferencing Robot With An iPad For A Face
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The one company that has really succeeded in this area is Giraff. They've done so by intensely focusing on in-home care and the user experience for the person interacting with the robot. Things like end user controls to approve/reject someone who wants to start driving the robot.
Anybots, on the other hand, focused more on the driving experience. Their rendered, in-browser, drive window helps overcome the awful user experience of trying to turn under lag. They also did a lot of hard work to solve wifi roaming and seamless handoff.
I wish Double the best of luck with my advice being that you need months of uptime and recorded daily use in a target vertical before you're ready to release.
As far as driving goes, we have 3 or 4 different methods we want to experiment with once things settle down, but so far the joystick-style is most intuitive. OpenTok's new iOS to iOS video has cut down on the lag a bunch.
Thanks for the comments!
-marc @ double
I found the VGo to be a huge help when it came to being present in an office that I couldn't physically go to at the time. I was the head of a department that had groups in different cities, and it was a lot easier for me to feel I had a cohesive team when I was able to actually "be" there instead of just on Skype. It's hard to overstate the value of being able to go join a quick work session at the couches, or go looking for someone in an office where people are always busy and wandering around.
Of course, in a large company where not everyone is an early adopter, to put it politely, there's also an annoying side to having a telepresence robot. Some people spend more time focusing on the novelty than getting to work, and it can be a distraction. A lot of people weren't comfortable using the VGo themselves, even though it was available for anyone. There are definite social hurdles to overcome with some people.
I'd probably like the Double even more than the VGo, because it looks less intrusive, has a larger screen thanks to the iPad, and the adjustable height is a very big deal. I'm looking forward to having one in the future. Love the price, too.
It strikes me that the main axis of competition is simply price. Otherwise it just seems like co-opetition.
In a week that NASA lands a robot on Mars, I'm glad to see real technology being created, that perhaps looks crazy or inapplicable at first. Great stuff guys.
We have a remote worker. During meetings, the iPad that he's on just sits on a desk, pointing at only some of us. It would be nice if he could turn around and face the person he's addressing. It's a small thing, but important.
Seriously, an app that can remotely command a turntable/stand would be neat.
TouchOSC would be able to do it, provided the right proxy and hardware at the other end. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchosc/id288120394?mt=8
It's much better for me (because I can attend) and it's better than screensharing and teleconferencing because the participants in SF do not have to use some program to accommodate me.
This is huge. There's nothing worse than holding up an entire meeting while someone struggles to connect to you via video chat while IT is in there sweating bullets because a new driver/update is trying to install itself.
Removing this burden from others would be worth it to me.
Or "hey, Bob, I'm glad you could use the teleoffice installation to join us today. Gosh, I wish I could have you with me tomorrow when I go across town to check out a small factory. You know so much more about that stuff than me, but unfortunately the tele-office is huge and all."
Second, does this small factory have high speed wifi? In my experience, that's very rare.
You know what does work in these situations? Flying out to the meeting.
As a technologist and possible early adopter, it is really easy to see how YOU'D use something. It is far harder to put yourself in the shoes of another and judge it from their perspective.
That said, once telepresence robots are in place, they seem to be very sticky - most people don't want to give them up. [1]
A key quote from [1]: "the greatest barrier keeping telerobotics from conquering the office probably isn’t hardware or software, it’s red tape"
[1]: http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/23/exclusive-head-of-robod...
Anyway, my argument on its own probably isn't sufficient to justify running out and buying a $2000 robot + iPad, etc. but it is surely _part_ of bigger argument for these things.
Also, in response to your later comment about how well-recieved these units will be, I think they will be ubiquitous in a few years. I think you'll see them used in all of the areas discussed so far plus many more we haven't even though of. I could see an army of these things in stores, checking with customers, providing information at airports. The uses are nigh-endless.
Remember, just a few years ago the idea of having a _phone_ that went with you was crazy talk. Now it would be weird to _not_ have one.
Ubiquity requires more than just the robot though - it requires real policy change and upsetting the status quo. I think that's the hardest part.
Also, RE: downvotes. It is far easier to downvote than it is to engage in a rational discussion. So, thank you for that tankbot. =)
So... why does it have to be self-balancing? Just add a third wheel and it's always stable - no need for gyros and complicated electronics. And as a by-product, you have immediately lowered the price massively: it's just a few motors then instead of that balancing magic. My price lowering guess would be between 50% and 80% lower. That would be really "the lean startup way" in my book.
(Idea courtesy of http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=segway_more_complicated_t...)
Also the extra cost of the accelerometer and gyro is almost negligible these days, thanks to smartphones requiring them to be made in such high volume. For both together, it's maybe $20 or less in volume.
I feel like the biggest issues might be missing ambient spatial awareness for the user - with that non-wideangle lens and mono microphone you can't see the whole environment at once, you have no idea where somebody is talking from, and you cannot turn quickly enough to always track what's happening in a room, if people are leaving/entering etc.. How do you plan to make the user feel more "there"?
Also, micro-managing the movement of the bot would take up a lot of time that I don't have to spend when I'm present locally. E.g. when I'm present myself, I just look somewhere, then think "I want to go there" and it all happens automatically. With the bot, I have to manually navigate around plants and desks. It would be great if we could do the same thing with the bot: just touch on the screen where you want to go, and the bot figures out the rest. Or show a floor plan, touch where I want to go and the bot does it. Do you have plans in this direction?
I was ready to dismiss the idea until I saw the end of the video. I think outside of business/work it could be quite useful (as demonstrated by the art gallery).
On second thought, however, why would you want to look at art through a low quality iPad camera when you could browse a website with high-res images of the same stuff?
I'm not sure that usage would pass the gimmick test after the novelty wore off.
How does it stand up though? Is there an acceleramoter or similar powering a balancing act?
I would guess that it is a beefed up version of something like this: http://blog.makezine.com/2012/03/28/an-inexpensive-self-bala...
I like their tiny kickstand as a solution for keeping the thing upright without draining the battery. I wonder if that deploys only when the bot is in sleep mode, or if it can come out when someone is using it but "standing" in a single spot for a prolonged period of time.
Yes, the kickstands can be deployed manually during a call or automatically, if the robot is sitting in one place for a long time. When the user attempts to drive again, the kickstands instantly lift off the ground and the robot can drive again.
I love that of this was taped at TokBox :-)
Disclaimer: I'm the founder
What is "OpenTalk"? I've never heard of that protocol/API/software before. And Googling turns up nothing except some abandonware from 2009. http://download.cnet.com/OpenTalk/3000-2150_4-10568159.html
Seems ironic that "They were actually developing a product that required partnerships with Chinese manufacturers, and they found themselves increasingly frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t keep an eye on the project".
In the workplace this would just be embarrassing. Not to mention a security threat, there's no way any serious corporation would allow roaming cameras in their offices.
If I put my idealist hat on and try to imagine the future with these, I keep coming back to those Segway videos of the hype of a new kind of city, a new kind of transportation.
This really is a technology in search of a use case, that isn't already being addressed. I read comments that say they would use these to attend meetings, how does this robot compare to Cisco's video conferencing, or FaceTime or even just calling in from the car/home. At work we use screen sharing and audio/visual conferencing which seems to work just fine, and where it doesn't it will evolve.
I'm wondering how this robot would push the elevator button to get to a meeting on another floor? There are just so many problems with this idea, not the least of which is who would actually buy one.
In my experience, many if not most of the most important conversations are not pre-arranged meetings. If you use existing teleconferencing technology you miss them all, and if you use a Double you don't. That's a qualitative change.
On the other hand, people do have a love/hate relationship with meetings: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120519462810425677.html
I can buy into the importance of impromptu meetings. I wonder if the Double team can figure out a way to market around impromptu vs pre-arranged meetings and love/hate meetings without alienating too many people.