Does your wife know about this?
Is this the real-life Serge?
In watching the video Bossa Nova has shown, it looks like the team took the Ballbot concept and created a much better solution that comes with its own kickstand (or the “rapid deploy safety mechanism” invented by Project Scientist Ben Brown).
In a true collaborative fashion, they have enabled the mObi to support both Willow Garage ROS and Microsoft’s VPL.
From the site, we see that the mObi is 4.75 feet tall (compared to the over 5 feet of Suitable’s Beam) and the screen is the same as all tablet devices.
From reading their site, the mObi seems to be a proof of concept similar to iRobot’s AVA – allowing for others to leverage the device.
Check out their video below.
If there is a chance to test-drive this Ballbot, please contact us here.
At midnight tonight, Suitable Tech’s CEO Scott Hassan unveiled the second version of their Remote Presence System – the Beam.
The Beam itself is not the System, since the collection of components (the Beam remote presence device, the Beam client app and the docking station) make up the entire system. engadget was given a preview which shows the device as Scott has “beam”ed into the Beam. See the video below:
Yes, Mr. Scott – we are happy to see Beaming work finally. The most notable differences in the Beam seem to be:
As we get more hands on with the Beam, we will give you a more detailed analysis of this device and its value for money compared to its competitors.
For now, We want to Beam!
With a slew of articles discussing “Shelbot Has Nothing on These iPad Telepresence Robots” or “Double Robotics’ telepresence robot gives your iPad legs” in the last 24 hours, we were thrilled to see someone come up with an incredibly simple, elegant solution to the quite expensive iRobot Ava.
From the video, the device covers a number of issues that needed to be addressed to make a compelling, reasonably-cost remote presence system:
And while the system does have that sexy, Industrial Design look (see VentureBeat’s fawning over it), it is essentially taking the basic concepts from Anybots and using the premise from the iRobot Ava and pairing up with iPad’s video capabilities.
While it is an excellent entry into the telepresence robot space, one will have to see how they handle the issues of wifi router handoffs (since the iPad has ahold on the handling of the network), sudden accidents that cause the iPad to fall down (e.g., the Anybots had a nicely padded head ring around it) and how is handles charging without someone around to take care of the “plugging in” (see how vGo and the Texai accomplish it).
Kudos to the team at DoubleRobotics and looking forward to test driving in the near future.
Nao, meet Jazz. Jazz, Nao.
JC has taken the role of Chief Science and Technology Officer, bringing his skill to augment the Aldebaran product offering. From the press release, it sounds like this acquisition was to strengthen both players – Aldebaran for the software and market availability into telepresence that GOSTAI could offer and GOSTAI gets a long running partner brand that can share in talent, tech and overall market resources and distribution.
So, we have InTouch partnering with iRobot – which offers protection to both players in terms of patent protection and market entry (iRobot into telepresence and medicine). Then we have Aldebaran with GOSTAI – potentially for a similar situation. What next – will Adept purchase Giraff? Suitable purchase Anybots?
Only time will tell.
Mazel tov JC, mazel!
Fancy new robots coming to the markets nowadays.
A year ago, InTouch Health and iRobot announced a partnership in terms of development and patent portfolio sharing. Yesterday, they announced the launch of their Remote Presence Virtual & Independent Telemedicine Assistant or RP-VITA.
The RP-VITA is an excellent marriage of the two companies capabilities – iRobot provides the drive and navigation technology, InTouch Health provides the doctor interface and the experiences for the RP-VITA’s upper torso. As our prior coverage with InTouch Health’s CEO Dr. Yulin Wang showed, the headpiece of the RP-line of products is one fo the key components and distinctive attributes that makes the RP-line so successful. Components like:
Sometimes it takes a bit of jetlag and some interesting emails to spur on a post here at Pilot Presence. And once again, we have some doozies:
Robot Startup Companies – our friends at The Robot Report has done some excellent work in capturing around 130 robotics companies around the world – include some of our favorites like Suitable Technologies , Robodynamics, 5DRobotics and Robotex. Seems they missed out on our friends in Russia, r.bot.According to the study, it’s not actually the robotic technology itself that was the stumbling block to implementing robots before now. It was the connection speeds.
David Rogan, new CEO of Anybots
The email (from Tim Lenihan at Anybots) tells us that David Rogan, former Cisco Executive has joined Anybots as Chief Executive Officer to help bring about the re-energizing of the company.
Rather than rewrite the press release (which you can see here on the Anyblog), we were incredibly happy to hear that Trevor has kept the company in the fore and not letting the market pass Anybots by. The rumors included confirmation that engineers had been let go ˜ but with David, it sounds like things may get interesting.
Gostai is working the European market pretty hard, iRobot and InTouch Health have partnered up and vGo is making the rounds of the news networks – Anybots has been a thought leader in remote presence/telepresence robots.
And, in the upcoming weeks, it sounds like Suitable Technologies will be showing off their next play in the remote presence systems.
We here at Pilot Presence wish David well in his pursuit – and we look forward to more stories about Anybots.
So, you might ask, where have you been all this time? Aren’t things getting a bit exciting nowdays?
Enjoy the best of the bunch:
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:
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!
