Stay home, let Texas Robot attend that meeting

"Hey, I love what you're wearing today." Staff at Willow Garage chat with a robo-present colleague who's only half-there.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)

If you're tired of commuting to the office and telecommuting won't cut it, the Texas Robot lets you scoot around work embodied in a robot platform while chatting with your co-workers.

Willow Garage, a robot start-up in California's Menlo Park specializing in non-military applications, is developing the wheeled bots as tools to research telepresence technologies.

The vid below shows how a Willow Garage employee living in Indiana moves around his office in Silicon Valley in a robot body of sorts.

Hacked together from spare parts for Willow's PR2 platform, Texas Robots basically consist of a screen, computer, cameras, and speakers mounted on a remote-controlled, wheeled platform. They can run a whole day on a single battery charge, and then autonomously park themselves at a docking station for recharging.

Texas Robots seem to give users a greater presence at a remote location than, say, Web conferencing or a conference call. You can casually drop by a colleague's office, roll by their cubicle, and attend meetings, all in your pajamas from home.

Willow Garage has just completed building 25 Texas Robots to study the effects of having a small army of telepresent people in the office and other locations.

We're waiting for the company to tell us whether it plans to commercialize the "Texai," as it calls the bots. But I can't imagine too many reasons to leave the comforts of home and commute to the office now that they're around.

(Via I Heart Telework)

[solitare_pax]

I for one welcome our new robotic co-workers who will quietly replace the telecommuters on their quiet quest for world domination.

[grizzled82]

I like this for when you are on business leave and need to do something back at the office. But the problem i see is what happens when this becomes to common and the person stays at home. we wont have any physical contact with any body. Didn't anybody see Wall-e and learn from it

[Mergatroid Mania]

Now if only they would add arms and a soldering iron I wouldn't have to come into work at all.

Hey, think it could drive my car? I could let it do my service calls for me!

[TheLeopardz]

Can it go to school for you, too? And P.E.?

[A_Mike]

Has anyone seen Surrogates ? this is the begining of the end. Soon Bruce Willis will be stomping on crashed 18 wealers in pusuit of a deadly people destroying weapon.

[Chimel31]

Not a very objective article, not a single criticism about the disadvantages and blocking factors of such a robot, starting with acceptation from other office colleagues, how cumbersome and time-consuming (read time taken out of work) it is to remotely drive around the office, park into an office or a meeting room, not embracing fully the benefits of telecommuting (i.e. adding wheeled robots does not optimize office space), etc.
I cannot see in this article any advantage to telecommuting, it seems much more efficient to use technologies such as Remote Desktop to work on your office computer from home, or to take avail of the existing videoconferencing equipment in the meeting rooms. This motorized robot does not even allow meetings with multiple persons, just 1:1 meetings (1 camera and 1 monitor does not cut it).

That company must be well funded if they can afford to investigate such purposeless gadgets. You don't need to be mobile to simulate presence, better add a couple of vidphones in strategic places such as the office's kitchen so that people at work can talk to their remote colleagues during a coffee break. Instant messaging is already a good way to connect groups of workers, and there are many options for multiple chatters to enter a virtual cam room if you need video. These companies should hire a teenager to set them up, not a start up.

Won't take long for people to hack the remote controls and take the bots out of the office for street races...

Chimel31 -

We (at the Garage) are aware of many of the issues - which is why the Texai are designed as test platforms. We have experienced nothing but positive experiences with the original Texas, and are interested in learning many of the issues you have discussed your comment.

One of the reasons we have found the robot to be very effective (above and beyond the typical video conferencing or screen sharing) has been in the interpersonal interactions and the chance meetings that are part of the normal interpersonal interactions that make business move much more effectively. To give you a simple example, we originally planned out a three month time frame for the build of the 25 Texai you see on our site - and due to the effectiveness of the prototype Texas robots (original and Texas6), we were able to complete the build 10 days ahead of schedule - even with supplier issues and specific resource constraints.

As for placement of video conferencing phones - while that is a nice way to place people in the locations others are, there is nothing better than the ability to walk and talk with someone - even if they are embodied in a robot. The sense of connection is much greater than simply popping up in your IM list or appearing on the video screen of the local video-phone.

And, as for hacking the system, we actually designed the Texai to be "hackable" - in the sense that we want people to feel free to modify the mechanical and the software. One of the precepts of Willow Garage is making robotics more accessible. Enjoy playing with the Texai - we are excited to hear you want to hack them!

[kwconley]

The first Texas Robot was built specifically as a response to dissatisfaction with videoconferencing equipment. Although there were strategically placed web cameras around the office, including in meeting rooms, it wasn't the same. Dallas (the inventor) could only interact with people during meetings or other pre-arranged encounters. Also, the only people who got to know him were people who regularly had meetings with him. Most of our interactions in the office occur in large common areas in the hallways outside people's offices, which videoconferencing did not provide an adequate solution for.

BTW: I just finished a three person "meeting" with Dallas outside my office -- it was more just catching up on things since our party last Friday, which he remotely attended.

[lateef_10]

this is really nice

[Rod Roddy]

Imho I say we're headed for a "wall-E-esque" future. Video conferencing is fine for overseas clients and the like. Why robots?

[borogoves]

I think this robot was prototyped at TechShop in Menlo Park. Can the makers confirm? (I remember seeing something like this down there when I first joined.)

[kwconley]

I believe you're thinking of the HeadThere robot, which is a cool system