What if Facebook bought Anybots?

Rumors have come to the attention of our blog that our friends at Anybots may have been acquired by the Facebook monolith — in their quest to acquire developer talent and potentially some neat telepresence toys.

To be clear, this rumor has yet to be substantiated by anyone — but in our investigation of some of Anybots’ web footprints have led us to think something may have happened to our friends in Mountain View in the past two months:

• The last tweet on Anybots’ twitter account was March 12th,
• The last Anybots’ blog post was on March 10th,
• The last time the Anybots’ Test Drive was operational was some time between March 12th and April 15th (as seen on the Anybots Test Drive Help page), and
• Anybots was suspiciously absent from the Techonomy event on May 3rd — and Trevor is never one to miss such an event

If Facebook did acquire Anybots during the mandated IPO quiet period, then both parties could not say anything until the IPO — which could explain why Anybots has been uncharacteristically quiet these past two months.

Hmmm – guess we will have to wait until after the IPO (or someone from Anybots tells us otherwise) to see if there is any truth to this rumor…

And Zuck (if we may call you that?) — if you did acquire these guys, do us a favor and keep the QB team humming — the world is a lot more interesting with QBs in our midst!

And, a small errata to InfoWorld’s article on Affordable Videoconferencing. Hidden within the article has the following paragraph (bold by us):

If you’re looking to telecommute and want a physical presence attached to your videoconference element, you might try a remote presence system (RPS) — sort of like Skype on a stick. If you’re a “Big Bang Theory” aficionado, you might remember last year’s episode with Shel-bot, which used Pilot Presence’s RPS product.

Whoops.

The Texai – which was the the Shel-bot of The Big Bang Theory fame – is made by Willow Garage, not by our small publication.

And, even funnier, if you are next in Los Angeles, we hear rumor that Warner Brothers may be setting up a replica of the Shel-bot on their VIP Tour. But, that will have to be confirmed.

My favorite part was the section on being in two places at once:

Small robots could be used so busy people can send them to events for video and voice transmissions when their presence isn’t required, Schmidt said.

“In the future you’ll be able to dispatch a robot to each event,” he said.

I wonder where he got that idea from?

Enjoy the best of the bunch:

• Bell Labs developing Nethead, a cheaper teleconferencing robot – Yes, another player entering the market with a new remote presence system. As per the article in The Verge, although Nethead is currently only a research project, Bell Labs says the robot could be commercialized in two years and sold at a cost likely in the “hundreds,” not the “tens of thousands” often required for telepresence setups.
  (h/t from slashdot and tyrgr)
• Anybots Roundup – and now, while much has not been discussed on the topic of telepresence robots, Anybots has been getting a great deal of press from a video on AOL entitled “Anybots Robot Can Attend Meetings For You” and Lord British’s gets some press on having his Anybot tooling around his Texas office
• iRobot CEO: Enough with the gimmick ‘bots (Q & A) – So Colin once again puts a spin on things having to do with gimmicky and cute. Worth reading – but you can also read the interview Colin gave us back in March. Sounds very similar. Now if only we could get others to make more entrepreneurial ventures.

But, much like the industries before it – the manufacturers, the producers of the physical product, the captains of the industry, all drive the greatest innovations in the industries.  I can think of a few:

• Ray Kroc and McDonalds
• Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company
• D.J. Depree and Herman Miller
• William Boeing and Boeing
• Bill Hewlett and David Packard and HP

The ability to shape the “feel” and the production of a product that creates an experience for others is key in the adoption of a product.  Jobs has a fanatical attitude of the proper attention to detail, quite like how Bill and Dave used to have for a particular engineering culture (read The HP Way).

The ability to shape the culture, the product and the build of a product that is going to elicit an emotional response our of its users – that often comes from genius or a culture of genius – which allows others to rise to that level of perfection.

Remote presence system companies might be able to get great outsourced manufacturing deals in other countries and focus on contract manufacturing to bring a product to market – but it will be the passion for the users – both the pilot and the participants – that will make the best product stand out.  A company that OWNS the manufacturing; creates the plant and the experiences in hardware that will win out – software will not be the end-all, be-all.

I appreciate the work that GOSTAI, Anybots, vGo, iRobot and others are embarking on – and right now, I do not see anyone with the unifying vision of how the RPSes will exist in the world.  I believe it takes a combination of a leader with a single-minded passion and a team around him/her to bring this emotional connection to pass.

Yes – I think the vGo and the Jazz is cute, and the Anybot is a funky device that is quite impressive in its ability to handle the inverted pendulum.  But none of these products are in the direction I would say will change the way people interact with them.  I am waiting to see what the next Steve Jobs will appear in the industry.

I will be catching up with Pilot Presence news in the coming weeks. Sorry for the extended holiday.

Source: Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

Recently, I read that they have successfully tested LTE and demoed it at the Verizon Innovation Center on July 13th. Founder Tim Root gets quoted and the vGo gets a glamour shot about three minutes into the video.

In addition, vGo gets some press on CNBC’s “The New Industrial Revolution” segment. If the embedding worked, you should see it below.

Granted, Dr. Wang (Yulin) is a gifted robotist that we interviewed before, but with InTouch Health, they are focused on the development of the continuum of service for the healthcare market. InTouch have successfully developed technologies that support networking across the emergency networks for their systems, they have handled the troublesome hurdles of the FDA and other medical regulations to get their products into hospitals and other medical locations, and they have spent a great deal of time learning about the customer needs in the healthcare market. As they continue to build out their offerings, which is becoming more and more workflow-based, InTouch could benefit from a deep technology bench that is growing with other revenue sources.

Enter iRobot and Colin. Not sure if Colin had the lead on the deal, but with their push and experimentation on the AVA and their need to get a strong foothold in another market, why not partner with the one company that has become synonymous with “telemedicine” and “remote presence”? With AVA in this market, InTouch can keep their eye on the networking and workflow management, while iRobot focuses on the platform and the other “robotic” issues.

We also love the inclusion on the press release of the “extensive cross-licensing of the companies’ patent portfolios, giving the collaboration a formidable patent position.” WIth Suitable, Robodynamics, vGo and others – this sounds like a big stick that can be used to beat down other players from entering the market.

The problem with that is that InTouch Health somewhat successfully discouraged a competitor with part of their portfolio and discovered that most of their patents had limited use – aside from pushing that company to Sweden (see the story on Giraff). We see that line as a way to scare people off, but we are not fans of when patents are used to threaten innovation – and in this case, we can see that being one of the tactics used.

We see this as a move to strengthen the two companies in their own positions – Dr. Wang gets access to new tech and a salesforce that has been itching to get into another market with a viable product and iRobot gets to value itself more as its patent portfolio becomes more defendable and they have another great partner.

Congrats guys – we look forward to see what fruits are borne of this relationship.