telepresence
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Confirmed: FaceTime for iPad 2 works with video out
This morning, fellow TUAW blogger Erica Sadun and I both played with the video out features of the new iPad 2. While Erica discovered that something is preventing her iPad 2 from working properly with the video mirroring function that is supposed to work with all of the various video adapters (HDMI, Composite, Component and VGA) for the device, I was able to get mirroring of everything on my iPad just by plugging in the VGA Adapter. TiPb's Rene Ritchie verified that video mirroring was plug and play for him with all of the adapters as well. While that means a lot for all of us who demonstrate apps on the iPad, it means even more for people who use FaceTime or other video conferencing apps. We were able to confirm that FaceTime on the iPad 2 can be mirrored to another display. By pushing the video out to a big screen HDTV, for example, you can now share a FaceTime session with a group or the family. This is going to kill the market for Cisco's $500 "ūmi telepresence" device, which turns a big screen TV into a home teleconferencing tool. Sure, the ūmi is about the same price as an entry-level iPad 2, but the ūmi also requires a $99 annual service fee. FaceTime on an iPad 2? Free. ūmi has better resolution than FaceTime does, providing full 1080p video calling over the somewhat lo-res FaceTime image on the iPad, but the iPad can do so much more than just do teleconferencing. It may be time for Cisco spokesperson Ellen Page to get a new gig. Erica and I also discussed the fact that by feeding the iPad 2's video mirror into a capture device, such as an Elgato Video Capture, it would be possible to grab fairly high quality movies of an iPad screen for training or demonstration purposes. Video mirroring FTW!
Cisco's Umi and TelePresence video calling systems: now with work at home and home at work
It was only a matter of time before Cisco's Umi and TelePresence services got together for some HD video calling synergy, and the company has finally enabled "full interoperability" between the two. Not only that, but the networking giant is also rolling out a free HD calling client called Umi Connect for PC and Mac (think SkypeHD) and a new Umi 720 system that works with slower broadband connections. The 720 will cost $399 upon its market arrival this summer, while the already available Umi 1080 gets a much-needed-yet-still-underwhelming hundred dollar price drop to $499. Service fees have also fallen from $275 to $99 a year and from $24.95 to $9.95 monthly for those who are commitment-averse. Maybe now you can persuade the bossman (or bosslady, as it were) to finally let you work from home -- though pants-free employment will undoubtedly remain off, or maybe just under, the table. PR's after the break. [Thanks, Adam]
Danish professor crafts a robotic twin: behold the Geminoid-DK (video)
Uncannily realistic telepresence humanoids aren't just for the Japanese -- this week, it was revealed that Denmark is home to a brand-new Geminoid -- the Geminoid DK. Modeled after professor Henrik Scharfe at Aalborg University, this Geminoid-F derivative was constructed by Kokoro and ATR, the very same organizations that built the last few we've seen. The more things change, the more they stay the same: DK pulls off the beard quite nicely, but it still looks downright creepy when it smiles, blinks and breathes. See for yourself in plenty of video footage, both above and after the break.
Man builds machine to push phone buttons from half a world away (video)
If your ambition was to travel the world, and your job to push the buttons of three cellphones located in South Korea, you might go insane. That seems to be what happened to Mok Young Bak, at least, when he invented the crazy contraption depicted in the video above. Called the Caduceus, it's a telepresence machine that does just one thing -- it controls every single button on each of those three phones with a series of servo motors and actuator cables, and moves a pendulum-like webcam so he can clearly see each screen from wherever he happens to be. That way, he can enjoy tourism while leaving his livelihood within reach, at least so long as concerned neighbors don't assume the terrible din is, say, a killer robot assembly line, and insist that police investigate.
Johnny Chung Lee makes DIY telepresence bot out of an iRobot Create and a netbook
Most of us don't have $15,000 to drop on an Anybot, even though having one around would be nice in the event we don't feel like leaving the house to get some coffee. To help those of us with more humble means, our old friend Johnny Chung Lee (of Wiimote hacking and Kinect dev team fame) has utilized his prodigious DIY talents to create a video chat robot for the relatively paltry sum of $500. Using an iRobot Create ($250), a netbook with Skype ($250), a cable to connect the two, and some control software he wrote himself, Mr. Lee built a digital surrogate on the cheap. Johnny isn't the first person to so leverage iRobot's hacking platform, but he added a stand on top of the robot to get the PC closer to human height, attached a fish-eye lens to the webcam for better remote viewing, and even did some re-wiring to allow the netbook to charge via the Create's base station. The code and how-to instructions are up on his blog, so hit the source link if you're feeling up to making one yourself. Seems like Johnny Lee's putting that Google 20 percent time to good use thus far -- keep 'em coming. Check the video of this latest creation after the break.
Robot buys a scone in a coffee shop, that's all you really need to know (video)
Robots. Constructed by man to make our lives easier and provide opportunities for sloth that might not have arisen otherwise. One resident of Mountain View, California decided that commanding his Anybot to fetch a scone from Red Rock Coffee was a good use of the $15,000 telepresence automaton. And here we thought bot proliferation would either freak us out or engineer mankind's demise -- turns out it'll just add a few more folks in line while we wait to order our next cup of joe.
Texas student sends robot to school in his place, can't get it to do his homework
You may have recently seen telepresence robots played for laughs on The Big Bang Theory, but they do also have quite a few practical purposes, and high school student Lyndon Baty from Knox City, Texas is now using one to particularly great effect. He has a weakened immune system that prevents him from actually attending school, so he's using a remotely-controlled Vgo telepresence "robot" that allows him to move from class to class and interact with teachers and other students using nothing more than his laptop and webcam at home. The bot itself is four-feet tall, self-balancing, and simply packs a basic video conferencing system up top that allows its operator to interact with their surroundings -- at $5,000, it's also considerably cheaper than some other similar options. As Popular Science notes, however, this isn't the first time that a telepresence bot has gone to school -- a student in Russia suffering from leukemia has also been using a similar bot since September of last year as part of a pilot project from the robot's designers. Head on past the break for the local news report from Texas.
Self-balancing Anybots QB now shipping, the future of telepresence is now (video)
First they came for our telepresence, and we did not speak because we couldn't afford them. Then they came for our physical presence, and there was no one left to speak out for us. Yes, Anybots are coming, the self-balancing QB robot available for purchase and shipping now, but at $15,000 we're thinking not too many of you will be jumping on this bandwagon to start. As we saw in our hands-on in December the self-balancing bots enable you to be somewhere that you aren't, controlled through a simple web interface and enabling executives to remotely monitor and run over the toes of their peons toiling in the office while said execs sit comfortably at home. There's some footage of one of the bots in action below, which you'd better watch before one of them captures footage of you maintaining a state of inaction.
ZMP's City Simulator Experiment takes the driver out of the car, keeps the helmet just in case (video)
ZMP has done some great things in the past -- well, except maybe Miuro, the roving iPod dock that ensured your PMP would always be just out of reach. Lately the company has been focusing on self-driving cars like the RoboCar MEV, and while this little one most certainly does have a driver, that driver is not actually in the car. It's a potential roadway revolution. Just imagine being able to partake in your morning commute from the safety of your own home! Right now it's just a little RC car (not unlike Malte Jehmlich's telepresence Wipeout from last year) being steered by what looks like a Logitech Driving Force GT, making us hope that the next Gran Turismo offers a mode just like this -- minus the headgear.
iRobot AVA chills with us at CES, will turn Android and iPad app developers into roboticists (video)
We just got a chance to meet iRobot's AVA and talk to iRobot's CEO Colin Angle about his plans for this intriguing new bot. What we're looking at right now is basically a developer platform, or a "concept car" as Colin put it, showing off ideas for a consumer-facing bot with a lot more smarts than a Roomba, with hopes to attract developers who can extend its functionality. What wasn't clear to us before is that the tablet perched atop the bot can be any iPad or Android tablet -- not some first-party model by iRobot -- and the point of that is to let existing iPad and Android devs to develop apps using their regular tools that can control the bot through an API iRobot will give them access to. That means, unlike some robotic SDKs out there, developers won't have to learn the ins and outs of robots before they build an app for the AVA, they just have to pass simple instructions to the bot which can be interpreted by iRobot's already impressive software. For instance, the robot can already drive itself around a building and map it entirely, so then a software dev would just have to pick a point on a map and send AVA on its way -- no complicated navigation work on the app dev's part. iRobot also sees potential for game devs, which is particularly interesting because they could combine two of the "hot" areas of current game development: Kinect-style motion controls and touch controls. It's all very exciting, we assure you, so we suggest you follow after the break and watch this video -- before we sic AVA on your ass. %Gallery-113314%
iRobot debuts AVA telepresence robot with tablet controls
iRobot's first attempt at a telepresence robot, a modified Roomba, was a false start, but now they're back with an all-new bot called AVA which should right all wrongs. The bot can adjust its own height from three feet to five feet tall to meet you at eye level, with a tablet perched on top (this is CES 2011, after all). Its base is an odd three-wheeled configuration for maneuverability, and the robot has DARPA Challenge-style environment mapping to avoid bumping into anything or anybody. For sensors the AVA is using dual Kinect-style PrimeSense sensors, along with laser rangefinders, scanning acoustic sensors, and bump sensors. There's naturally a microphone and camera for the bot's primary purpose: video telepresence. What's more interesting, however, is that iRobot has an apps platform for this, which will allow developers to build new functionality. There's no word on price or when this will go on sale, but we already know one thing: we want one. Check out some quality time that PC Magazine's Lance Ulanoff spent with AVA after the break.
DIY telepresence robot uses PrimeSense Kinect drivers for extremely awkward push-ups (video)
From enhancing your WoW game to putting you in Tom Hanks's shoes, DIYers the world o'er really do seem to love Kinect. And what do we have here? Taylor Veltrop's Veltrobot remote telepresence 'bot uses the PrimeSense open source Kinect drivers for tracking the user's skeleton, with a modified Kondo KHR-1HV mirroring the operator's movements (which are received via 802.11n WiFi). Right now he is only controlling the arms, but with any luck we should be seeing complete control over all the robot's movements soon enough. Once the thing is finalized, Veltrop plans on releasing an open source development kit. And then? That's right: robot avatars for everyone!
EngKey telepresence robot teaches English to Koreans by way of the Philippines
You know, for all the hubbub we've been hearing about le robots (the robots), you'd think we'd see them put to better uses than chasing our pets and killing people. Right? Right. Well, the best use we can think of is education, and that's exactly what they're doing at an elementary school in Daegu, South Korea. Developed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology (KIST), EngKey is just under three-and-a-half feet high, features a video display for a face, and seems hell bent on taking all those "teach English in Korea" jobs away from shiftless American college grads looking to postpone responsibility for one or two more desperate years. There are currently twenty-nine such devices, which -- get this -- are actually operated remotely by teachers in the Philippines. Is this the end result of globalism? Not quite yet: for the time being, the robots are still too cumbersome to operate and expensive to justify putting into production. But who knows? Maybe someday, kids.
Two Kinects join forces to make 3D telepresence, enable virtual light saber battles (video)
UC Davis's Oliver Kreylos has been responsible for two of our most impressive Kinect hacks yet. He was one of the first to get proper 3D video out of the thing, following that up by pairing up two of the cameras, one to fill in the gaps of the other. You might have thought he was just playing around but no -- oh no. There was a method to the madness and his ulterior motive has been revealed: 3D telepresence. This is what he's been working on all along and he has an early version operational, using the output from two Kinects in a remote office to beam a 3D representation of another person to his display, which he can navigate around (and through) using a Wiimote. Meanwhile, the viewer can see the position of Oliver in real-time, a virtual camera floating around and enabling them to maintain eye contact despite her not actually looking at either physical camera. That demonstration is embedded after the break along with a somewhat fanciful follow-up in which Kreylos engages in a rather... protracted lightsaber battle against the forces of evil.
Anybots QB hands-on
This week at GigaOM's NetWork 2010 conference in San Francisco, we briefly mingled with our robot overlords and survived to tell the tale. Anybots was letting its $15,000 QB telepresence robot decimate roam the crowd, and we were invited to interact with one and then take another for a spin by way of remote control. The experience was entertaining but still rather impersonal, mostly due to the lack of two-way video, something that's billed as "coming soon." There's no word on whether the robots -- which are starting to (literally) roll off the assembly line -- were amused or not. Based on our abysmal remote-control skills, we can only assume our lives were spared for one reason: to write this post. Take a look at our videos after the break! %Gallery-110307%
MantaroBot telepresence robot works via Skype, offends our aesthetic sensibilities
We don't see much in this space from Mantaro, an engineering and development company that usually works on things like network management systems and switches for telecoms. That's why we were pleasantly surprised when the company announced an affordable telepresence robot. How affordable, you ask? Well, in a marketplace where these things can easily cost well over ten grand, MantaroBot can be yours for a cut-rate $3,500. Unfortunately, in a marketplace where these things can easily cost over ten grand, MantaroBot also looks like it cost a cut-rate $3,500. But you know what? Sometimes one must choose function over form. And what you get here is pretty straightforward: the remote operator steers the robot and communicates using a Skype plug-in (PC only) that also allows 180 degree panning and tilting of the onboard HD camera. This bad boy also features infrared sensors for obstacle detection, communication link monitoring (if you go offline, MantaroBot stops in its place) and more. Available now. PR after the break.
Dynamic 3D holograms can now refresh every two seconds, save galaxies in their spare time
Perhaps the biggest challenge in making holograms usable on a daily basis -- aside from having to film your subject with a million trillion cameras -- is in getting their refresh rates up to the levels we're used to with "normal" two-dimensional video. We're still a fair way away from those magical 30fps, but the University of Arizona is touting a heretofore unheard of redraw rate of once every two seconds. This is a major advance from their first dynamic holograms demonstrated two years ago, which required minutes to swap over to a new image. The current prototype is built on a 10-inch photorefractive polymer screen, with lasers beaming information onto it, though 17-inch versions are also being tested. Another present limitation is that the hologram displayed can only be of one color, but that is also subject to the continuing labors of the UA researchers, who foresee no major hurdles preventing them from eventually cobbling together full-color, fast-refreshing, and fully realized 3D holograms. Now that'd be 3D television we can all get behind. Or in front of, depending on the viewing angle we want.
Cisco unveils Umi consumer video conferencing system
Well hey -- Cisco's finally announced the consumer-level HD video conferencing system that's been rumored for a while now. Called Umi, (you me -- get it?) the system consists of a 1080p camera module, remote, and a separate set-top box. Cisco says Umi will allow for full 1080p video calls with 720p/30 recording, with a fallback to 720p / 480p if bandwidth is constrained. The camera itself has a glass lens with an optical zoom, autofocus, auto exposure and auto white balance, as well as motorized pan, tilt, and zoom. There's also a motorized privacy shutter, which is a nice touch. The service is compatible with Google Voice and Video Chat, and Cisco says it's looking into FaceTime integration as well -- we'd expect Skype and Fring are also high on the list of potential partners. Cisco says it'll be demoing Umi on Oprah and launching an ad campaign with Ellen Page in the runup to a holiday launch, but none of that will distract from the required $24.99 monthly / $275 annually Umi service plan and $599 MSRP. We don't know how well that's going to go over with anyone, but that'll give you something else to ponder along with this new Cisco slogan we just came up with: Cisco Umi: Now you have to wear pants.
Screen Grabs: Willow Garage's telepresence bot guest stars on The Big Bang Theory
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dot com. CBS's The Big Bang Theory is the super popular sitcom about brilliant nerds. If you've been watching, you've undoubtedly seen Steve Wozniak's recent guest spot -- but there have been other notable presences, too. Willow Garage's Texai telepresence robot recently made an appearance as "Shel-bot" -- a stand in for the character Sheldon. While we didn't get to see the hilarious high jinks ourselves, we can tell from the screen shots that it was a pretty good time. Hit up the coverage link to learn more about Willow Garage's Texai.
Cisco to announce high-def consumer telepresence device next week?
Cisco is certainly no stranger to the telepresence world, offering a high-end system catering to your high-paid CEO and his high-def boardroom. However, that doesn't do Ma and Pa Internet User much good when they want to dial up their offspring and see how the grandkids are faring. This, it seems, is Cisco's next step, with the company launching an "inexpensive home telepresence product for personal use" according to All Things Digital. At a press conference scheduled one week from today, a device and service are expected to be unveiled with a cost between $200 and $500 (depending on carrier subsidies) that will enable easy high-def video calling -- something SkypeHD and others do today, but supporting devices have been slow to find success. What will this device look like? Well, Cisco Senior VP Marthin De Beer said earlier this year: "We didn't buy Flip to have it be only a video recorder." He also said: "We would absolutely love to integrate with FaceTime." That latter bit sounds a little optimistic, but high-def telepresence that's as simple to use as a Flip HD? It could be good -- or it could be another FlipShare TV.
