Can't Make That Meeting? Send a Robot Instead...

Hewlett-Packard has built a robot "stand in" that lets you attend business meetings virtually.

Plain Words reports.

Fears of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and terrorism, along with drastically reduced travel budgets, mean more and more companies are looking at video conferencing as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. But scientists at technology giant, Hewlett-Packard (HP), say the most natural way to "meet" when people aren't face-to-face is to use robots.

They've built a gadget called a "travel robot". It essentially allows a person to be in two places at the same time, using the robot as a stand in. They can attend a meeting, wander from office to office and even whisper an aside to someone -- all from a thousand miles away.

A distant co-worker sits in a small room surrounded by projectors that display the surroundings of the meeting. The robot's liquid crystal display (LCD) screen beams back sounds and images from the meeting to the person. Meanwhile, the robot's head, which consists of several flat-panel displays, shows the distant co-worker's face and facial expressions to those attending the meeting.

The robot might be big on high tech, but doesn't cut a dash when it comes to boardroom fashion: it's made of purple plastic, is around 5 feet 8 inches tall, and has a wheeled base with circuitry and a power socket.

Spooky

Some who saw the robot in action were unnerved by it. HP scientists, working out of a research laboratory in Palo Alto, California, recently gave a demonstration of one of the prototypes. It could navigate through corridors, press elevator buttons, lower itself to eye-level at a conference table, and even mix and mingle with associates as if it were a person. But people found it spooky. So the current model is not as mobile, nor does it have arms. "They'd seen too many movies with robots crushing things," said one scientist.

HP considers the device more a "surrogate" than a robot, as it has the face and voice of the person who is remotely controlling it.

"It's not really a robot," says Norm Jouppi of HP. "Robots decide what they want to do by themselves. This is not a robot any more than your car is a robot. You control it the same way you would a car, only remotely."

Jouppi admitted that, like video-conferencing equipment, the travel robot has a slight disadvantage: it experiences almost a one-second delay between what the person behind the robot says and when the surrogate "says" it.

"The latency is not where we want it," he said.

Existing technology

While HP emphasises that the travel robot is a research project that will not necessarily become an actual product, the scientists point out that they used existing technology to construct it. The set-up for the distant co-worker, for example, uses five PCs, five cameras, and a surround-sound system. While the in-office robot is made up of two PCs, a number of cameras, four directional microphones, and several speakers.  A high-speed wireless network is needed at the meeting site to transmit the information back to the remote colleague.

HP won't be drawn on how much such a robot would cost. But it is certain to be more than the price of a few airline tickets.

The fact is, even with slashed travel budgets and the SARS scare, some businesses may not consider the investment viable. Not only would they have to mothball their current equipment, they would have to buy one robot and one control room for each remote worker.

"Let's use the tools and solutions in [a company's] office, rather than having to go out and buy more hardware," said Kent Kappan, a spokesman for PlaceWare, a Microsoft-owned company that helps businesses conduct web conferences.

Kappan said his company's research shows that most people who use web conferencing don't care if their faces are on a monitor. They would rather have the ability to work on their PowerPoint presentation, and get on with the work in hand, rather than look at each other in a meeting.

Virtual doctors

But HP is not unique in developing robots as a replacement for travel. Los Angeles-based InTouch Health, for instance, sees robots as a way to allow doctors and health care providers to be virtually at the bedside of patients around the globe. Then there is FALSTAFF, which is an expendable bomb disposal robot that allows bomb squads to disarm ordnance without actually risking their lives at the scene.

Whether robots will catch on in business remains to be seen. But as people get more and more used to communicating over the Internet by e-mail, instant messaging and web conferencing, face-to-face meetings will come to be seen as less necessary - even a bind. After all, why travel to the U.S., Europe, or even a hundred miles up the motorway for a two-hour meeting when you don't have to?

Plain Words Editorial
4.6.2003