Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Dead Robot

Well my robot finally died.  A couple of years ago I joined OculusVR and moved to Southern California.  For two months I worked remotely from Austin and used the robot during that period,  but after moving to Cali and being once again physically present in an office, I partially disassembled the robot and used it simply as a decoration.  I recently was relocated to the Bay Area and during the move the robot was mishandled and broke.  Not beyond repair mind you, but it's not worth fixing at this point.  So this project and blog are officially over.

Today, telepresence robots are coming down dramatically in price (~2500) and are within reach of a remote IT worker, and I would suggest to anyone seriously interested in one for work purposes that they purchase one of these consumer products.  It would be a lot more reliable and less fuss.  But I learned a lot building this one and I'm glad that I had that experience.  Oh, and I eventually met Johnny Lee in person and was able to thank him for the inspiration to undertake this project.