[Dprglist] telepresence today

[Patrick R. Michaud]

You might look into the food service delivery robots that joined the UTD campus this last fall.  Definitely take a look at https://www.utdallas.edu/services/news/20191203/ and https://www.utdallas.edu/services/dining/delivery/ .

Before the campus closed, there were a fleet of these robots roaming the campus.  Although they can navigate autonomously, they're monitored by humans that can take control at any time, and they also do things like greeting people and thanking people and the like.  More importantly, they also have to navigate a *lot* of social norms, like when to cross a street or how to give the right of way to bicycles and pedestrians, and so forth.

The company that creates the robots is Starship Technologies ( https://starship.xyz ) -- their leaders came to the Texas BEST Championship last December to meet with students and have their robot deliver award plaques.  We never saw who was actually controlling the robot.  :)

If you like, I can see about going through my UTD contacts (the ones that arranged for Starship to present at the championship) and try put you in touch with the Starship folks.  I suspect they can share a lot of expertise on the sorts of issues they're working with.

Pm


On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 11:42:09AM -0500, Karim Virani via DPRGlist wrote:
> Does anyone here have hands-on experience with telepresence robots? I know
> a lot of us have experimented with the concept. I've done things like setup
> a remote pan-tilt webcam at my desk at work with remote desktop and a
> webcam feed so people could see me controlling my pc and I could direct the
> webcam on their end so I could look around in the office. They found it
> novel but spooky. But it didn't have the ability to move around. My team
> has played around with this on mobile robots, but only in a trivial way.
> Though we are working on truly remote control of our current robot.
> 
> Here is a compilation of some currently available options:
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-telepresence-robots
> 
> I'm not just interested in the technical aspects. What about the social
> norms? How do you set expectations for co-works for simple things like
> helping the robot through doorways or to different floors of an office?
> Especially when it is not inhabited.
> 
> Clearly this industry is going to boom. Thoughts?
> 
> Karim

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