Anybots threw a little party to celebrate the launch of their QB telepresence robot last night, and for some inexplicable reason, I was invited. Before getting too terribly drunk, I took a few pictures which I’ll post for you, and after getting too terribly drunk, I attempted to drive a QB around Anybots headquarters, causing no small amount of property damage and personal embarrassment. (Read more…)

You know, I never thought about it until now, but QB would make a pretty decent (albeit kinda expensive) Weeble.

Also, I really liked this illustration from the Anybots FAQ on how to use QB while on a business trip:

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

[ Anybots QB ]

Anybots is now taking pre-orders for what’s (realistically) the first self contained commercial telepresence robot available to the general public, QB. A $1500 pre-order (don’t get too excited, that’s just a 10% down payment on the total cost of $15k) gets you into the “100 Club,” which is good for:

o Access to the first 100 Anybots’ serial numbers
o Invitation to a reception at Anybots headquarters
o VIP Anybots test drives for you and five friends
o Access to on-going perks as Anybots rolls out additional products and services
o A November 2010 Anybot (the rest of the pre-orders ship in 2011)

QB is designed to be very easy to use… You log in to the robot from any computer, and you get a video feed and directional audio to let you interact with other people, plus driving controls. The robot has a LIDAR system built into its base to help you avoid obstacles, and it automatically corrects for the fact that you suck at driving robots. Thankfully, although it’s a Segway-type 2 wheel balancing robot, it has a “tail” that keeps it from falling over and crushing your pets and/or kids if it loses power. Not that it’s likely to crush much of anything… At 35 pounds, QB is borderline anorexic (just look at that figure!) and can be easily lifted up and down stairs into a car or something like that.

I hope (I really do) that QB becomes (if not hugely popular) at least commercial successful. Or at the very least, commercially not a total failure. Big, expensive, commercial robots that don’t build stuff haven’t really found a market niche, and this is not the greatest economic climate to introduce something like QB (although I’m sure Anybots would argue that QB will save you lots of money in the long run, and they might be right). In any case, there are several other telepresence robots who will be watching QB closely, and for the sake of this whole industry, I hope this launch goes well.

Check out a FAQ full of tasty info here.

[ Anybots QB Preorder ]

We first introduced you to Anybots’ QA telepresence robot back in January of 2009 at CES. QA was pretty slick looking, with features like a bendy waist and an LCD tie and a pricetag of about $30k. QB, a stripped down slimmer version of QA showed up about 9 months later, and now Anybots has announced the official launch of QB.

All QB needs to be fully functional is you plus a computer on one end, and it plus wireless internet on the other. It has a top speed of 3.5 mph and will run for a solid eight hours per charge. The Anybots QB telepresence robot will be available this fall for $15,000, which seems like a lot… But, compared to the cost of (say) hiring a new employee and paying for them to relocate, or flying people back and forth across the country all the time, a $15k telepresence robot may make sense for a lot of businesses.

[ Anybots QB ]

At CES last year, BotJunkie was among the first to introduce you to Anybots’ QA telepresence robot. We were a little bit skeptical, though, about how much of a market there was for a $30,000 robot that performs a similar function to some guy walking around holding a netbook running Skype, especially in this economy.

At the 2009 IEEE conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA) conference, Anybots demonstrated their latest telepresence robot, QB, which looks like a simplified version of QA… A simplified version with an eating disorder, since it doesn’t have that slick body on it anymore. Among other things, it also doesn’t have the ability to bend at the waist, it doesn’t have a big screen for displaying ties, and it doesn’t have that friendly looking head with glowy eyes. The most important thing that QB is missing as compared to QA is the pricetag of $30k; QB is estimated to cost only $10,000 – $15,000. That’s a lot cheaper, to be sure, but is it going to be cheap enough for commercial viability? According to Anybots, here’s the key difference between a telepresence robot and Skype:

“You can communicate with people while they are in their element, such as an office, manufacturing floor, or home,” Rapacki explained. “It’s easier to drop in on people this way or inspect parts in a manufacturing plant.”

Granted, this is an ability that’s unique to a mobile telepresence platform, but I still have to question whether or not it’s commercially viable. As I said last year after meeting QA, I really really hope that I’m wrong, that there’s a huuuuuge market for robots like this, and that Anybots will go on to produce a robot that will do my dishes. Sort of.

[ Anybots ] VIA [ Technology Review ]