Hewlett-Packard is working on a “travel robot” that can sit in for you at meetings while you’re thousands of miles away. But it’s not like you’ll be able to take off and go water skiing or whatever is you’d do instead. The travel robot is designed to let you more fully participate in distant company meetings courtesy of what amounts to souped up video conferencing. The travel robot consists mainly of a bunch of LCD screens that can capture all of the facial expressions of someone in a remote location who sits in a virtual version of the meeting location that’s recreated via projected images.
The promise of such technology is that a remote co-worker can hear the formal part of a meeting as well as participate in the chitchat within the room. Using a joystick, the distant participant can pick up on a sound in one part of a room and join in that conversation.
The best part of this story, though, is how HP had to remove the robotic arms that came with the first version of the travel robot. As one of the engineers on the team said, people got too freaked out because they’d seen too many movies where robots crush things.
