PALO ALTO, Calif.
(AP) -- 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 the Palo Alto offices and workshops of Suitable
Technologies. The 5-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.
More and more employees
are working remotely, thanks to computers, smartphones, email, instant
messaging and video-conferencing. But those technologies are no
substitute for actually being in the office, where casual face-to-face
conversations allow for easy collaboration and camaraderie.
Telepresence-robot
makers are trying to bridge that gap with wheeled machines - controlled
over wireless Internet connections - that give remote workers a
physical presence in the workplace.
These
robotic stand-ins are still a long way from going mainstream, with only a
small number of organizations starting to use them. The machines can be
expensive, difficult to navigate or even get stuck if they venture into
areas with poor Internet connectivity. Stairs can be lethal, and
non-techies might find them too strange to use regularly.
"There
are still a lot of questions, but I think the potential is really
great," said Pamela Hinds, co-director of Stanford University's Center
on Work, Technology, & Organization. "I don't think face-to-face is
going away, but the question is, how much face-to-face can be replaced
by this technology?"
Technology watchers say
these machines - sometimes called remote presence devices - could be
used for many purposes. They could let managers inspect overseas
factories, salespeople greet store customers, family members check on
elderly relatives or art lovers tour foreign museums.
Some
physicians are already seeing patients in remote hospitals with the
RP-VITA robot co-developed by Santa-Barbara, Calif.,-based InTouch
Health and iRobot, the Bedford, Mass.,-based maker of the Roomba vacuum.
The
global market for telepresence robots is projected to reach $13 billion
by 2017, said Philip Solis, research director for emerging technologies
at ABI Research.
The robots have attracted
the attention of Russian venture capitalist Dimitry Grishin, who runs a
$25 million fund that invests in early-stage robotics companies.
"It's
difficult to predict how big it will be, but I definitely see a lot of
opportunity," Grishin said. "Eventually it can be in each home and each
office."
His Grishin Robotics fund recently
invested $250,000 in a startup called Double Robotics. The Sunnyvale,
Calif.,-company started selling a Segway-like device called the Double
that holds an Apple iPad, which has a built-in video-conferencing system
called FaceTime. The Double can be controlled remotely from an iPad or
iPhone.
So far, Double Robotics has sold more than 800 units that cost $1,999 each, said co-founder Mark DeVidts.
The Beam got its start as a side project at Willow Garage, a robotics company in Menlo Park where Goecker worked as an engineer.
A
few years ago, he moved back to his native Indiana to raise his family,
but he found it difficult to collaborate with engineering colleagues
using existing video-conferencing systems.
"I
was struggling with really being part of the team," Goecker said. "They
were doing all sorts of wonderful things with robotics. It was hard for
me to participate."
So Goecker and his
colleagues created their own telepresence robot. The result: the Beam
and a new company to develop and market it.
At
$16,000 each, the Beam isn't cheap. But Suitable Technologies says it
was designed with features that make "pilots" and "locals" feel the
remote worker is physically in the room: powerful speakers, highly
sensitive microphones and robust wireless connectivity.
The company began shipping Beams last month, mostly to tech companies with widely dispersed engineering teams, officials said.
"Being
there in person is really complicated - commuting there, flying there,
all the different ways people have to get there. Beam allows you to be
there without all that hassle," said CEO Scott Hassan, beaming in from
his office at Willow Garage in nearby Menlo Park.
Not
surprisingly, Suitable Technologies has fully embraced the Beam as a
workplace tool. On any given day, up to half of its 25 employees "beam"
into work, with employees on Beams sitting next to their flesh-and-blood
colleagues and even joining them for lunch in the cafeteria.
Software
engineer Josh Faust beams in daily from Hawaii, where he moved to surf,
and plans to spend the winter hitting the slopes in Lake Tahoe. He
can't play pingpong or eat the free, catered lunches in Palo Alto, but
he otherwise feels like he's part of the team.
"I'm
trying to figure out where exactly I want to live. This allows me to do
that without any of the instability of trying to find a different job,"
Faust said, speaking on a Beam from Kaanapali, Hawaii. "It's pretty
amazing."
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
