3 ms·

What it feels like being an iPad on a stick on wheels (2013)

42 points by dsr12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bbarn 9y ago
Had one of these at our office. I used it as a remote worker on a team across the country. Few things - the author's wish list is out of date. Mine I could drive into a dock and it would charge the whole thing and the iPad. The device is great, and did improve my telepresence significantly. That said, the problem was consistently that the double robotics website you must run it through was consistently either down or had such poor bandwidth I couldn't use it. I wish I could take everything about this device, and host it in the office. It got to be near unusable most of the time, and we just switched back to webex. Expensive experiment.
foobarian 9y ago
My biggest peeve with one of these were the audio properties. The frequency response on the speaker is in the high notes, and the audio codec tends to have artifacts in the high frequencies. Combine these two and you get a shrill very far carrying sound; as a result whenever someone in our company was using it it disturbed a vastly larger radius of people than a face-to-face conversation would have.
alxmdev 9y ago
It would be really interesting to read more about the physical participants' impressions of this. Having a screen on a stick with a live human face on it follow you around must be quite the uncanny valley.
- bbarn 9y ago
  The people I worked with had a lot of fun with it. They'd dress it up like me, prank me by putting things in the way I couldn't see, etc. Occasionally they'd lose their composure at talking to it and start chuckling, the uncanny valley you mention at work I suppose.
- userbinator 9y ago
  I would probably find it rather creepy, because all it reminds me of is some dystopian sci-fi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpg580OfC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpg580OfC0
fsiefken 9y ago
I wonder if it would give more 'presence' by using it from within VR and a stereoscopic 360 cam. You would need a way for the double to present in what direction you are looking at, so perhaps make a cylindrical screen (not sure if these exist) or a led line with one or two 'eyes' like Kit or a Cylon. This would solve the problem of the uncanny valley. We have the capability to do this, but all people can come up with is an uninspired ipad on wheels.
- rhaps0dy 9y ago
  If you were using VR glasses, then no camera could capture your face and show it on the robot. It's probably better to control the view direction using the gyroscope on the tablet that you are holding with your hands.
  - bfuller 9y ago
    Easily fixed by pointing a camera at your face and googly eyes glued to the glasses
  - fsiefken 9y ago
    Or a CGI generated face with googly eyes. Make the robot head transparent and spherical, with a one way screen for the stereoscopic camera, and holographically project your avatar (with googly eyes) inside the sphere looking in the same direction. A bit like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/27/3d-sphere-star-wars-hologram_n_5720810.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/27/3d-sphere-star-wa...
osrec 9y ago
I think this sort of works if the operator is familiar with the surroundings, but even then, I can see this being rather annoying for others physically present in the area... Also, I'm not sure what problem this is specifically solving. If the idea is to give you your own point of view, then toy like controls probably won't cut it. They should really look to provide an interface with an AR headset of some kind.
simooooo 9y ago
The thought of even trying to work like this makes me want to cringe out of my own skin. Glad someone else tried it through

42 points by dsr12 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Had one of these at our office. I used it as a remote worker on a team across the country. Few things - the author's wish list is out of date. Mine I could drive into a dock and it would charge the whole thing and the iPad. The device is great, and did improve my telepresence significantly. That said, the problem was consistently that the double robotics website you must run it through was consistently either down or had such poor bandwidth I couldn't use it. I wish I could take everything about this device, and host it in the office. It got to be near unusable most of the time, and we just switched back to webex. Expensive experiment.

foobarian 9y ago

My biggest peeve with one of these were the audio properties. The frequency response on the speaker is in the high notes, and the audio codec tends to have artifacts in the high frequencies. Combine these two and you get a shrill very far carrying sound; as a result whenever someone in our company was using it it disturbed a vastly larger radius of people than a face-to-face conversation would have.

alxmdev 9y ago

It would be really interesting to read more about the physical participants' impressions of this. Having a screen on a stick with a live human face on it follow you around must be quite the uncanny valley.

bbarn 9y ago
The people I worked with had a lot of fun with it. They'd dress it up like me, prank me by putting things in the way I couldn't see, etc. Occasionally they'd lose their composure at talking to it and start chuckling, the uncanny valley you mention at work I suppose.
userbinator 9y ago
I would probably find it rather creepy, because all it reminds me of is some dystopian sci-fi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpg580OfC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDpg580OfC0

fsiefken 9y ago

I wonder if it would give more 'presence' by using it from within VR and a stereoscopic 360 cam. You would need a way for the double to present in what direction you are looking at, so perhaps make a cylindrical screen (not sure if these exist) or a led line with one or two 'eyes' like Kit or a Cylon. This would solve the problem of the uncanny valley. We have the capability to do this, but all people can come up with is an uninspired ipad on wheels.

rhaps0dy 9y ago
If you were using VR glasses, then no camera could capture your face and show it on the robot. It's probably better to control the view direction using the gyroscope on the tablet that you are holding with your hands.
- bfuller 9y ago
  Easily fixed by pointing a camera at your face and googly eyes glued to the glasses
- fsiefken 9y ago
  Or a CGI generated face with googly eyes. Make the robot head transparent and spherical, with a one way screen for the stereoscopic camera, and holographically project your avatar (with googly eyes) inside the sphere looking in the same direction. A bit like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/27/3d-sphere-star-wars-hologram_n_5720810.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/27/3d-sphere-star-wa...

osrec 9y ago

I think this sort of works if the operator is familiar with the surroundings, but even then, I can see this being rather annoying for others physically present in the area... Also, I'm not sure what problem this is specifically solving. If the idea is to give you your own point of view, then toy like controls probably won't cut it. They should really look to provide an interface with an AR headset of some kind.

simooooo 9y ago

The thought of even trying to work like this makes me want to cringe out of my own skin. Glad someone else tried it through