Who says you can’t be in two different places in the same time, physically speaking? Maybe regular people would be tempted to agree such a statement, which is based, after all, on rules that everyone know and take for granted. This is one of those impossible things that won’t happen no matter how anxious you are about the speed of the advancement of the human development.
I really don’t think that our contemporaries will catch the days when they will be able to be at their office, working hard for projects that should have been finished days and days ago, and at their home, in bed, resting their bones for the next day. I’m sorry, but you won’t get to see something like this!
Well, if you wonder what is telepresence about, then this is it. It “refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location” ( Wikipedia).
Therefore, if you really need to be in two places in the same time, a solution for you is a telepresence robot introduced by Anybots, a Silicon Valley-based company, at Consumer Electronics Show. The robot was designed and developed in order to solve an acute problem of the humanity, the simultaneous presence in two different places, and gives you the freedom to more easily move around and interact with people.
Compared to other similar robots, the QA looks very much like a human, with the difference that it’s on wheels. Standing approximately 5 feet tall and weighing 35 pounds, this white robot with huge and soft blue eyes moves with about six miles per hour, having the ability to right itself whenever it runs over all sorts of obstacles.
QA has a 5 megapixel camera placed on its neck, giving the person who controls it via a PC the possibility to do this from miles away. This is, undoubtedly, a great way for people to communicate with their loved ones when they’re not physically around. The connection between this robot and the exterior world is made through corporate Wi-Fi or public 3G networks.
QA is expected to become available starting the third quarter of 2009, or at least that’s what the company plans. In addition, Anybots hopes that the robot will be sold for approximately $30,000.
