[CES 2009] Anybots QA Demo

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 14 of January , 2009 at 6:53 am

We first met Anybots last year when we got face to face with their Monty telepresence robot at RoboDevelopment. This year at CES, Anybots was demoing their new (and significantly more polished) telepresence robot, called QA (Question and Answer). QA can be operated remotely over WiFi or 3G, and streams VGA (640 x 480) video (and full duplex audio) at up to 20 fps. It also has a 7″ color LCD and a controllable 10 mW green laser pointer. The robot is 5 feet tall, weighs 30 pounds, and can go up to 6 mph on its self-balancing Segway style base. The lithium battery pack powers QA for up to 6 hours. Here’s the demo we got at CES:

The rear camera and laser pointer are nice touches, as is the ability to “sit” and the integrated touchscreen. However, without any manipulators, QA is fairly limited as far as telepresence goes. The question I’m forced to ask is, is QA really that much more practical a telepresence solution than simply setting up Skype on a netbook and ordering a minion to walk around with it? Yes, QA has more features and is personally controllable and is way cooler. But at the moment, it costs about $30,000, which is equal to, oh, about a hundred netbooks.

Anybots says QA is meant for intercontinental business telepresence, and yes, maybe it’s got a market there. But it’s a rather small market of people who’d actually be willing to buy one of these, I’d imagine, and most likely not enough to significantly reduce production costs via volume. I hate to be such a downer, because I love what Anybots is trying to do (“a robot in every house” FTW!), I just don’t see QA as a commercial success. Let’s just hope I’m wrong, shall we?

[ Anybots ]

Comments (5)

Category: Consumer

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5 Comments

Comment by Ironman

Made Wednesday, 14 of January , 2009 at 12:19 pm

It looks quite awesome.

function over form might need to be their goal though.

Comment by Ryan

Made Wednesday, 14 of January , 2009 at 1:19 pm

Gee, sounds like the pitch for Rovio and ConnectR! Really, do you need something that advanced JUST for added hight?

Comment by lb

Made Wednesday, 14 of January , 2009 at 1:41 pm

I don’t know – international business travel is pretty expensive. If you could cut out even a few trips a year with this thing, it would pay for itself rather quickly. Maybe this isn’t a huge market, not like the consumer home market, but I imagine it’s enough to make it workable.

Comment by Sparky

Made Wednesday, 14 of January , 2009 at 4:24 pm

This bot is wrong for so many reasons, not the least of which is price. I have been building 2-way video telepresence bots since the mid-90’s using a bottom up approach and mostly found objects.
Here is a profile of my work from MAKE: http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol16/?pg=52

Here is a link to a video and plans for a 2-way video telepresence robot for under $1000 using all off-the-shelf components. http://www.instructables.com/id/Sparky_DIY_Web_Based_Telepresence_Robot/

Comment by 12-42

Made Tuesday, 17 of February , 2009 at 1:42 pm

I’ve got nothing clever to say, I just like the tie…