September 8, 2010
Posted by beltzner
I am robo-famous
For the past few months Mozilla has been alpha testing “Texai” telepresence robots built by the fine folks at Willow Garage. The Mountain View offices play host to two of these robots, which are essentially dedicated Skype machines (webcam, cpu, monitor, speakers) on wheels. Add in some (web based!) software to control the login / connection / navigation parts of the experience, and you get a pretty complete package.
If I want to “walk” through the corridors in Mountain View, I load my web browser, log in to a webpage, connect to a robot, tell it to call me and as soon as Skype is running, I’m good to go. When I’m done, I “walk” back to a charging station, plug in, and sign off.
It’s a pretty painless transaction, and the benefits are huge. I’ve used it for large scale team meetings, one-on-one conversations, and just ambient presence looking to chat with some colleagues. In all cases, the initial awkwardness of being a non-corporeal head on wheels has vanished in the free flow of information. I don’t know if it would work as well if my colleagues didn’t already know who I was, and I’m certain that it wouldn’t work if all I was doing was monitoring a team at work or cracking a whip. But as a way of being “present” without having to board a plane, it’s startlingly effective.
The New York Times wrote a great little piece about it, and shot a video that demonstrates how the technology works. The Toronto Star also got interested, and wrote a piece focusing on me. This has made me “robo-famous”, but I won’t let it go to my disembodied head on a metal stalk, I promise you!
6 Comments
September 8, 2010
But are you notable _now_?
September 8, 2010
*applause*
(Also, no – I’m just using something invented by Willow Garage)
September 8, 2010
Damon sent me the Times article yesterday. So awesome. Kudos, Mike
September 8, 2010
That’s awesome! Now if only I could send one to work on days where I don’t actually feel like going.
September 14, 2010
http://davidpohl.wordpress.com/
Mike what you think about my last idea for the Firefox menu ? Is my ultimate idea. Is great and doesn’t change nothing in the Horlander interface. Fast and easy access to all options. It could be really nice esthetically : )
users do not like the lack of options: http://www.youtube.com/user/FirefoxNewMenu#p/a/f/0/CU_PShzdCsI
September 16, 2010
This is totally unrelated to the video, but I wanted to ask you if there were still 64-bit official builds of Firefox 4. Can’t seem to find any on the main beta page, only on the FTP server.
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