

Our Double Robotics Telepresence Robot arrived today - wplatnick
http://www.willdurness.com/tech/double-robotics-telepresence-robot-video/

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trepids
Very useful video to see the tech in action.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was how slow and pointless it was to be
navigating around the office workspace. Seems like such a waste of time to be
rolling around the office in a regular workday, at a speed that seems so much
slower than pedestrian traffic. My immediate thought was that it would make
worlds of sense to have the bot run ROS and generate sensor maps of the
office, so it could automatically traverse, and avoid objects, so I wouldn't
have to pay attention to the mundane work of having to drive it around. At
that point though, it makes me question having a driving around bot at all.
Video conferencing drops you immediately into the location without the
traversal anyhow...

Also, it def seemed to make some of the coworkers feel awkward and spied on,
especially the impromptu discussion the driver lurked.

Interesting to see this all in practice!

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wplatnick
When they were expecting me, interaction was great. It's definitely unnerving
some of them as more of our remote team is taking them for a spin.

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zwieback
Glad you're getting value out of it but to me it seems slightly creepy and not
very useful. I clicked on the link to the product and their video is even
creepier.

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stephengillie
How is facetime creepy? Is it the "radio controlled Segway" or the iPad stand?

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zwieback
I think it's the combination. Video conferencing is okay and I think
interacting with a robot might be okay but this halfway thing is really weird.
I'd rather not see someone's head floating around on a Segway.

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stephengillie
Would it be less creepy if it had a midget-mannequin wrapped around the stand?
Maybe it could be dressed like Tyrion from Game of Thrones?

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stephengillie
I'm really excited to see this kind of robotics become real. I wish we could
have one of these to explore the office my company just acquired.

I've thought of adapting my Arduino self-driving car to be wirelessly-
controlled, maybe by a RasPi. Use a WIFI USB stick and/or a cell-hotspot for
connectivity. Then put a microphone stand on it & tape a webcam shield to the
stand & SSH to connect to it. (The RasPi would make the project work better,
as most of these pieces already exist/could be modified to work with it more
easily than several Arduinos IMO)

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neonkiwi
Will, I'm curious about the latency of this setup. Could you get someone in
the office to control the Double while having the Double pointing at the
computer screen? Maybe with a clap at some point so we can see the source of
the sound and get an idea of delay? Thanks!

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wplatnick
Our local workers used it that way today. No latency issues. Nobody is
available to make a video of it at the moment.

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frankydp
I am thinking that they should be loud when they move, simulated loud like an
electric car, just to reduce the sneaky.

Also should have a very very pleasent ping sound for getting peoples attention
and what not.

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ngd
We attached a small bell to ours. A silent omni present robot was too much.

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umsm
I don't know if it's just me, but a vertical-line (similar to rear-view
cameras in cars) that guides the operator of the robot could be really useful.

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wplatnick
While using it, I also thought it would have been helpful to display both
cameras at the same time.

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neonkiwi
If I'm not mistaken, they're using a mirror to redirect the rear iPad camera
for the floor view. iOS doesn't let you access both cameras at the same time
so that's out of their control.

