A lot of people have been asking what we’ve been up to…

The answer is, A LOT! We’re getting ready to raise significant amounts of money. We’re also in the process of hiring the right CEO (tell us if you’ve got suggestions!). Soon we’ll be signing up reference customers as well.

Beyond this, we’ve been working really hard on the Giraffe itself — We’ve improved the user interface, improved the video and audio quality, invented some new technologies that we’ve also patented, improved the battery life, and much more!

We should have some exciting announcements really soon. We REALLY can’t wait to get the Giraffe out to our customers.

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Get it? Netiquette, Giraffequette? OK, fine, that’s not very funny, but I’ve always wanted to invent a new word. I’m talking about the social norms that should govern use of video conferencing robots. I started thinking about this because it seems there’s at least some concern out there that certain unnamed Dilbertesque bosses will start “patrolling the office” with the Giraffe. This thought makes some folks justifiably uncomfortable.

It makes me wonder if Alexander Graham Bell had people worried about how their bosses would abuse the telephone? Would the boss call them at all hours of the night?

Of course, history has shown that while this may occur on rare occasions, for the most part, bosses respect their employees privacy, because they know that keeping their employees happy is good for the company.

We think something similar will happen with the Giraffe. Any decent manager knows that invading an employee’s privacy is bad, whether they do it in person, or via some other means (telephone, Giraffe).

I think this speaks to an underlying principle: Anything you wouldn’t do in person, you shouldn’t do with a Giraffe. If you have a decent manager, this will be obvious to them. If your manager is terrible, he’s probably already patrolling the office without the Giraffe. If that’s your situation, I would recommend you quit your job and find a better manager. The Giraffe isn’t the issue.

There’s a flip-side to this, of course. Anything you wouldn’t do to a person, you shouldn’t do to a person who’s inhabiting a Giraffe. So while we realize it’s really tempting, please don’t cover the Giraffe’s camera with a towel, or stuff it in the broom closet.

By the way, the Giraffe is useful for much more than remote management. See our applications page for the details.

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Why am I so excited about telepresence? I think it might just be the killer app for robotics. I’m not the first person to think that, either. Rodney Brooks (of MIT fame) came to the same conclusion years ago. iRobot, the company he helped start, tried its hand at telepresence robotics, but gave up soon after.

You might ask yourself why on earth I expect to succeed when the greatest minds in robotics have failed. The answer is really simple: Their robot (the iRobot-LE) didn’t provide two-way video. In other words, the iRobot-LE was a spy camera on wheels. A local user would only a see a scary-looking camera riding on six wheels staring them in the eyes. Any sense of humanity came only through the disembodied voice of of the remote user. I expect this was just too spooky to have any widespread appeal.

The Giraffe, on the other hand, lets the local user see who they’re talking to. That means that instead of a spy camera, the Giraffe becomes a mobile window, bridging one place to another.

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We have been fortunate in that we have had enough savings to pursue our telepresence idea without any immediate need for outside funding. However, at some point, we will need outside capital to take things to the next level.

We’ve had our feelers out talking to people, and it seems that the main thing we’re missing is irrefutable proof that a market exists. Of course, we’ve conducted formal surveys, and the results were quite positive for market acceptance. However, going public with our idea, the publicity we generate, and the feedback we receive will serve as the ultimate proof that a market exists. We’re very excited to watch this process unfold.

Naturally, if you think the Giraffe is something you would be interested in one day purchasing, then please let us know. Thanks!

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Not really. As far as we know, we’re the first company producing human-height telepresence robots for consumers.

Eric Paulos and John Canny worked on telepresence robots at Berkeley
years ago. Eric Paulos and Mat Fogarty started a company, ‘Tmote’, to
commercialize the concept. They segued into helmet telepresence, and
despite commercial interest they were victims of the 2001 technology
crash.

A few companies make telepresence robots of various flavors, but they are all deficient in significant ways. Some cost $30,000 or $100,000, making them completely out of reach for most consumers and businesses. Most of them are ugly ( who wants a giant ugly robot in their office or house? ), heavy ( 200lbs is a lot to carry around! ), hard to use and feature deficient.

There were many MP3 players before the iPod was released. Why do most people think Apple invented the field? Because doing something well is a different ballgame than doing something first.

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Are we going to support Microsoft Robotics Studio? Not initially.

We’ve spent A LOT of time trying to figure out who our target customer should be for the Giraffe — home users? business users? day care? real estate? factory owners? We think there are great applications for the Giraffe in all of these areas.

However, as the high-tech marketing classic ‘Crossing the Chasm’ teaches, targeting a specific target market is critical for startup success. Out of the many potential uses for the Giraffe, the one we feel safest pursuing is the robotic enthusiast / tech geek submarket. This community has a HUGE overlap with the open source community. Using Microsoft Anything would be a huge turnoff to this market.

Besides that, the whole thing has already been written with open source technologies — OpenWengo, GNU Linux, AVR-GCC, …

If somebody wanted to make a Microsoft Robotics Studio port of our software, we certainly wouldn’t argue. But we’re planning on sticking with open source software ourselves for the long term.

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Everyone who works with software knows the importance of proper user interface design. But designing a telepresence device involves a unique challenge: Both the local user and the remote user must be presented with a user interface, and often their needs are in contention.

Consider the issue of determining the proper height for a telepresence device, for example. The remote user (the person controlling the device from afar) wants to be as tall as possible - no one wants to be perceived as toddler-height. On the other hand, a local user is likely to be intimidated by a tall robot - they’d prefer a shorter design. So how do we make everyone happy?

Here’s our solution: We placed the camera at the very top of the robot. The position of the remote user’s eyes on the LCD are about 6-8 inches lower. This means the remote user sees the world from a vantage point that’s 6-8 inches taller than the height attributed to him by the local user. Hopefully, this will keep everyone happy.

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I’ve been asked this so many times that I sometimes think we’d be better off making a robot that fetches beer rather than a telepresence robot.

My usual reaction is an exasperated explanation that the robot is not autonomous. The whole idea is that YOU are controlling the robot in a remote location. Besides this, if the robot is an office in Tokyo
and you’re in Cleveland, how are you going to get a beer — UPS? And then there’s the issue of the robot not having any arms…

While it would be convenient to believe that the people who ask about the robot bringing them beer are a bit slow on the uptake, the sad reality is that my thirty second elevator pitch obviously needs work. Darn it all.

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Where do I see telepresence going? So we’ve made a robot that lets you wander around and interact with people who are far away. That’s really useful right out of the box - you can talk to anyone, anywhere, and feel like you’re actually present with them while doing it. But ultimately telepresence should mean more than just the ability to hold a conversation.

Imagine a day where fully haptic interfaces exist allowing people in one place to manipulate objects remotely (as well as hold a conversation!).

This sort of technology has the potential to fundamentally change the way people live and work around the world. Imagine a world where you can live anyplace and work anyplace, even if they’re half a world apart. The ramifications of this technological inevitability are quite mind blowing.

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Our sample size is pretty small so far, but it seems like dogs act like the Giraffe is an inanimate object ( almost no reaction, even if you drive the thing until it touches the dog ). Don’t worry PETA people, no animals were harmed during the production of this robot.

Cats on the other hand seem to head for the door the moment the thing moves in any way.

What does this say about the psychology of dogs vs. cats? No idea, but we’re dog people anyway so this is working out well for us.

We’d love to hear your robot dog/cat reaction stories! Please post ‘em in the forums.

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