[AG-TECH] conferencing outside the box

[Andrew Daviel]

A few idle thoughts before Christmas (are you listening,
Santa ? I want a robot for Xmas...)


No matter how good the conferencing technology, there are
some things you just can't easily do in an electronic
conference, like chatting to the other attendees, or
asking private questions after a session, or visiting
the trade show. So I propose "Norbert the conference attendee",
a personal robot to free us from the drudgery of flying to 
conferences in Hawaii when we could be comfortably at home
watching it rain.

I have been playing with a wireless camera mounted on a toy R/C car
controlled over the Internet. It works, but it's a bit too close to the
ground for this kind of thing. Various groups such as Honda have made big
strides in humanoid robot design in the last couple of years, so it makes
more sense to use that technology instead. Having some onboard
intelligence is a good thing, too, so the robot won't smash things or hurt
itself. Besides, I suspect that things like walking or picking up
something require better than the 50ms or more latency of a long-distance
network connection.

So Norbert looks a bit like Isamu (see references), except he has an LCD
screen for a face. He has a speaker, a PTZ camera, and a couple of
microphones with echo cancellation. He has a wireless LAN card to connect
to the Internet, and the remote operator can walk him around and talk to
people. He can even get them a drink. The operator has a regular monitor,
videophone camera, and headset, and his/her face appears on the LCD screen
so that the robot can hold a fairly normal conversation with one or more
people, using facial expressions and performing movements such as turning
to face someone.

Of course this has all been suggested before I don't doubt.
I found a "AccessBot" intended for those with disabilities,
while the novel "The Modular Man" describes a teleoperated robot
good enough to fool casual onlookers that it's human (also for
the disabled, in fact).


References:
Isamu (http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9048148355.html)
Asimo (http://world.honda.com/robot/)

AccessBot: Jason Leigh et. al., INET 2000
http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/papers/Inet2000AccessBot.pdf

A "remote person" described in the SF novel
"The Modular Man" by Roger MacBride Allen (1992). 


-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376
security at triumf.ca