Employees 'Beamed' Into Work Using Robots (video link included)

Newsmax.com ^ | 12/24/2012

[RoosterRedux]

Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley.

But Goecker isn't in California. He's more than 2,300 miles away, working at home in Seymour, Indiana.

It's all made possible by the Beam -- a mobile video-conferencing machine that he can drive around his company's offices and workshops in Palo Alto. The five-foot-tall device, topped with a large video screen, gives him a physical presence that makes him and his colleagues feel like he's actually there.

"This gives you that casual interaction that you're used to at work," Goecker said, speaking on a Beam. "I'm sitting in my desk area with everybody else. I'm part of their conversations and their socializing."

Suitable Technologies, which makes the Beam, is now one of more than a dozen companies that sell so-called telepresence robots. These remote-controlled machines are equipped with video cameras, speakers, microphones and wheels that allow users to see, hear, talk and "walk" in faraway locations.

[RoosterRedux]

Beam Remote Presence from Suitable Technologies (Video)

Suitable Technologies site

[yldstrk]

that is awesome, way better than the telephone.

[cripplecreek]

Interesting toy but it seems kind of pointless to me.

[libertarian27]

Reminds me of the Bruce Willis movie “Surrogates”

Can see the office prankster putting ‘kick me’ signs on the back of the machines :)....

[cripplecreek]

“Chock my wheels”

[Johnny_cash]

I saw Sheldon do this on the Big Bang Theory....LOL

[RoosterRedux]

Say there’s a 1 hour meeting in LA that you would really like to attend, but it just isn’t worth taking the entire day to fly there and back...this device would save a huge amount of time and expense and hassle.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Saw that on the Big Bang Theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4a_jZoU_C0

[shove_it]

Do these beans come in male and female varieties (for office romances).

[RoosterRedux]

LOL...that Big Bang video is hilarious.

[Spunky]

I saw that episode. It was hilarious.

[cripplecreek]

Or they could use this new thing called telecommuting minus wasting time with wheels.

[KSCITYBOY]

I can actually see this having some benefit it it is easy to navigate & manipulate Think of the potential lawsuits the first time you run your mini me into a co-workers rearend.

[Sacajaweau]

I saw Sheldon, too. He is an extraordinary a** in that role...and from seeing him on talk shows...I'd say that is the actor himself.

I believe it's been in hospitals experimentally for quite a while. Saw it maybe a year ago..

[smokingfrog]

gives him a physical presence that makes him and his colleagues feel like he's actually there

Uh .. Sure thing..

[Tex-Con-Man]

The Surrogate...

(Arrested Development)