I’ve been thinking more of the IvanAnywhere idea of a roaming office camera. Sure its Star Wars-ish, but it also makes sense. It costs a tremendous amount of money for an employee to travel somewhere for a few-day trip. Figure $150/night, minimum for a hotel, $70/day for a rental car, $40/day for food, and $400 or so for airfare. For a three-day trip, that’s almost $1200!
Now roaming cameras like IvanAnywhere aren’t cheap, but the main cost is the robot itself. This robot is not mass-produced, so the price starts around $500 and up to $1500. If a mass-produced robot like the Rhoomba was outfitted with a camera things get a lot more affordable, around $200 for instance.
IvanAnywhere also lugs a big battery around to do its thing. This slows the robot and wastes energy when it moves. Perhaps an induction coil could be placed where the robot hangs out so that it could recharge itself. The drawback to this is that induction coils produce strong magnetic fields, which are not welcome around magnetic media such as hard drives.
Another idea would be to outfit the robot with the bare minimum parts to accomplish remote presence, leaving the computers, “brains,” and/or heavier parts anchored at a base station. The robot would communicate with the base station where all the computing would take place and save the movement tasks for itself.
During conferences, more than one remote worker could use the robot to participate in the meeting. Each could take turns moving the robot into individual meetings, jumping into and out of its “body” whenever needed. Only one worker could control it at a time, of course.
It wouldn’t take long for such a robot to pay for itself. It would save employees from the inconvenience of travel and still let them participate in the remote office in some way.
I might write the IvanAnywhere creators for their robot recipe, just to see if this could be done.