zarmanto's Journal: Telecommuting "Bruce Willis" style

Remember that guy who had a remote controlled robot built for him by his co-worker a few years back, to enhance his telecommuting job with pseudo-personal interaction? Well, it looks like the high-level geeks over at Willow Garage are experimenting with mass deployments of robots built around the same premise. From the article:

"Hacked together from spare parts for Willow's PR2 platform, Texas Robots basically consist of a screen, computer, cameras, and speakers mounted on a remote-controlled, wheeled platform. They can run a whole day on a single battery charge, and then autonomously park themselves at a docking station for recharging."

No word yet on commercialization of the Texas Robot... but if someone were to hack all of this together into one of Ishiguro's Androids, it could start to look an awful lot like Bruce's "surrogate" based future. And you all know that someone is going to say it, so I'll just say it now and get it over with: I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.