When the boss is a robot
By John Markoff (The New York Times)
Updated: 2010-10-11 09:00
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'Telepresence' enters the workplace but sets off alarms.
Sacramento, California
Mobile robots have for years been used by military and law enforcement agencies to disarm bombs and carry out other dangerous missions. This summer, such systems helped seal a BP well deep below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, with rapidly falling costs, the next frontiers are the office, the hospital and the home.
Robots are now being used in hundreds of hospitals as the eyes, ears and voices of doctors who cannot be there in person. They are being rolled out in workplaces, allowing employees in disparate locales to communicate more easily and letting managers supervise employees from afar. And they are being tested
as caregivers in assisted-living centers.
"Computers are beginning to grow wheels and roll around in the environment," said Jeanne Dietsch, a veteran roboticist and a founder of MobileRobots Inc., a robot maker in Amherst, New Hampshire.
Skeptics say these machines do not represent a great improvement over video teleconferencing. But enthusiasts say the experience is substantially better.
For now, most of the mobile robots, sometimes called telepresence robots, are little more than ventriloquists' dummies with long, invisible strings. But some models have artificial intelligence that lets them do some things on their own.
"The beauty of mobile telepresence is it challenges the notion of what it means to be somewhere," said Colin Angle, chief executive of one of the largest robot manufacturers, iRobot.
Dr. Alan Shatzel, a neurologist in Sacramento, has used a mobile robot to "see" patients in the emergency room of a hospital in Bakersfield, 420 kilometers away. By using the robot to interact directly with a patient, examine his face, and glance with the robot's camera at the cardiac monitor in the room, Dr. Shatzel was able to assess a stroke victim with the same acuity, he said, as if he were there.
"We had a good outcome," he said.
In recent months, four to six times a week, Mike Beltzner, the Toronto-based director of Firefox, the popular Web browser, has shown up for meetings at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the parent company, Mozilla Corporation, by logging into one of the robots available there.
"I'm very thin in this new outfit," Mr. Beltzner said in a room of Silicon Valley computer programmers, his face showing on a 38-centimeter LCD atop a narrow aluminum machine resembling an upright vacuum cleaner.
When the meeting ended, "Robo-Beltzner" - as one colleague called him - mingled in the large room, chatting.
"With the robot, I find that I'm getting the same kind of interpersonal connection during the meetings and the same kind of nonverbal contact" that he would get if he were in the room, Mr. Beltzner said.
Chad Evans, a software designerin Atlanta, has a robot that lets him work at Philips Healthcare in Foster City, California. When he is sitting at his desk in Atlanta, Mr. Evans is visible in a monitor at the top of "Chadbot," a 1.2-meter tall prototype built by RoboDynamics of Santa Monica, California.
His workmates can see at a glance whether he is available.
"Using Skype would require me to initiate a phone call," he said. "This gives me more of a passive ability. I'm just sitting here like I would be at my desk if I was in the office. I see people coming and going."
The possibility that remotely operated robots might be used by some managers as surveillance devices has made some in the fledgling industry nervous.
"I don't want this technology to be seen as a means of oppression," said Trevor Blackwell, founder and chief executive of Anybots.
Vgo's executives said they envisioned their robots helping care for the old. Using robots, remote family members could help elderly parents, allowing them to remain independent longer.
Still, no one believes the telepresence robots will be accepted without some resistance.
Lou Mazzucchelli, an expert in video teleconferencing, suggested robots might become a new target for frustrated colleagues. "All of these products," he said, "are just begging me to kick them over."