iRobot and Cisco Collaborate on the AVA Telepresence Robot

 Telepresence Robots  

iRobot and Cisco have teamed to bring the Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market. The robot blends iRobot's autonomous navigation with Cisco's TelePresence to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings and presentations where movement and location spontaneity are important.

When iRobot unveiled AVA about a year and a half ago, the company said it would make it's way into offices.  Now, in collaboration with CISCO, the AVA 500 telepresence robot has been announced.

Unlike other telepresence robots controlled with an iPad for video calls, the AVA 500 is an autonomous, high-end audio, HD video, top-of-the-line telepresence robot designed to be your meeting surrogate.

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iRobot's main advance over the rapidly-growing telepresence competition is the AVA 500's ability to navigate a space without human control on either end of the connection — a remote operator can simply select where in a building they'd like to be and the building's nearest AVA will give them a call when it gets there.

“We’ve been interested in remote presence for robots for more than 10 years and we believe this space will be important,” said iRobot's Colin Angle in an interview with Forbes. “I have very strong opinions about remote presence robots. Telepresence to date, has been more of a novelty, a fun factor rather than real communications. But the fun factor doesn’t mean usage or adoption into your daily routine or even an awareness that you don’t need to be physically present to have a presence.”
The metaphor iRobot began the project with, says Colin, is one of "teleporting to a meeting." The "operator" only has to operate when inclined to do so.

The robot is the second commercial application for the AVA platform. Earlier this year iRobot launched the RP-Vita in collaboration with InTouch Health, a remote presence robot for doctors to visit patients.

To be allowed to roam the halls of a hospital autonomously, the RP-Vita underwent FDA approval, which allowed iRobot to focus the selling point for its AVA platform, it's robust navigation system.

iRobot plans to ship the AVA 500 early next year. The bot is entering the "beta" stage right now, which basically means that iRobot didn't want to keep quiet about the project any longer. "We're announcing it because frankly we're going to start using it," Angle told The Verge. "We're so eager to start taking advantage of this tool we're developing."



SOURCE  iRobot

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