SCI-FI writers have long imagined technologies that would allow you to manipulate and control a perfect replica of yourself in a distant location. Today’s remote-presence robots are crude by comparison, amounting to little more than videoconferencing on wheels. But they can still be surprisingly nifty, as this correspondent discovered while pottering around RoboBusiness 2013, a robotics conference recently held in California, from the comfort of a desk 1,500 miles (2,500km) away, in Austin, Texas.
This was made possible using a Beam (pictured), developed by Suitable Technologies. It is a wheeled robot equipped with a camera, microphone and loudspeaker, and a screen displaying a live feed of its driver’s face. Instead of appearing to “locals” (as people at the remote location are known) as an image on a static desktop monitor, you are thus embodied in a physical object 1.57 metres tall, weighing just under 50kg and with a top speed of 1.5 metres per second.

Two wide-angle video cameras (with zoom and pan controls) provide a 105-degree field of view. A downward-pointing camera shows the area around the base to help you avoid obstacles. You pilot the device using the arrow keys on a computer keyboard. It all feels like guiding a character in a slow-scrolling computer game, except that the character and the game world are not virtual, but real. Beam and its ilk are limited for now: they cannot manipulate objects at the other end except than by knocking into them (few sport grippers), they are confined to relatively smooth floor surfaces and they require a high-speed internet link. But that still allows them to work in plenty of situations. Attending RoboBusiness by Beam, it was possible to visit booths, chat with people and attend meetings. The audio and video were clear regardless of the hubbub on the conference floor—and when talking to people using other Beams.

Taking notes involved the use of old-fashioned pen and paper, because the Beam lacks a built-in recording capability. Scott Hassan, Suitable Technologies’ boss, says the company decided against it, lest the robot be perceived as a surveillance device. But there is nothing to stop Beam users using separate devices or software to record audio. Accordingly, some people might prefer not to talk to what looks like a roving closed-circuit television camera.

Attendees at RoboBusiness reacted positively to the device, though a warm welcome was only to be expected from the sort of people that you find at a conference about robots. Conversations began and ended naturally, as they would in person, helped by the fact that you can point your Beam towards your remote interlocutor while talking, and turn away when you are finished. The only thing missing from the conference experience was the ability to sample free drinks.

Suitable Technologies deployed 50 Beams in this experiment. In 2015 it wants to have 10,000 of them roaming round the Consumer Electronics Show, a big trade event held each year in Las Vegas that is attended by 150,000 people. Beams currently sell for $16,000 a pop, but the company wants to offer conference organisers the option of renting the devices to attendees at a price that would be competitive with the cost (flights, hotels, and so forth) of attending an event in person. That said, if Mr Hassan and robots have their way, the whole notion of “in person” may be need redefining.