Remote Presence Links for May 12, 2011

Floating Telepresence

After a flurry of announcements this week, we find ourselves with a bounty of articles. Enjoy the best of the bunch:

  • Telepresence robots go airborne – An interesting article from the New Scientist which shows a floating blimp to allow for remote presence. It uses what looks like a mylar blimp and a small projector (my guess a low-cost, low-power laser projector) to project the face of the pilot on the mylar blimp. While interesting as a different way of representing presence, we believe the the system is quite flawed since the laser projector does not put out enough lumens for a normally lit room, let alone for a sunlight-drenched space. But a nice idea nonetheless. (One Percent Blog at New Scientist)
  • Luna Roundup – while iRobot’s presence at the Google I/O event on Tuesday has been making the blog rounds for the past two days, RoboDynamics has been generating a large amount of press as well for it’s $3K per Luna Personal Robot. As per our past post, see the roundup at IEEE Spectrum, Singularity Hub, CNET, ubergizmo, Plastic Pals and Engadget. And if you want in on the first run, head over to RoboDynamics website to signup for the notification email. Do we think it is a “telepresence robot”? Only if you extend it…
  • It’s Robots Galore at Google I/O – ummm, not really. Only if you think that Android phones moving around the table with some cute faces on them are “robots”. And we appreciate Colin’s comment in the article:

    “When I was growing up I always assumed there would be more robots than exist today,” Angle told the crowd of developers.

    So did we. (AllThingsD)

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