Some new links for your reading:
- Jazz Telepresence Robot Available – Price and Order Details – (SmashingRobots) when GOSTAI published their product on RobotShop, I was excited to see GOSTAI moving forward. The pricing looks a little more than I originally understood, but with a large unit order, you can get the price down.
- Super-geek builds DIY chatbot to speak to his fiancée – (New Scientist) Johnny Chung Lee has been making the rounds with his $500 telepresence system – articles are showing up all around the world. On his blog (procrastineering) he has published a number of details on issues to address to make the system truly work, but I would note that this is a engineering hack – made clear on this one paragraph:
The software does a few nice things like try to setup UPnP router port forwarding automatically, queries the external IP needed to make a connection over the open internet, maintains a network heartbeat which stops the robot if the connection is lost, a control password, auto-connect on launch options, and even mediates the maximum acceleration/deceleration of the motors so it doesn’t jerk so much or fall over.
The UPnP port forwarding is far from perfect is not well tested at all. If it works for you, consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, ask a friend how to set up port forwarding to enable remote control over the internet.
- Essential Features of Telepresence Robots (pdf) – (UMass Lowell) The team at UMass-Lowell has crafted another paper for the HCI ’11 Conference which goes even deeper into the guidelines for designing telepresence robots.