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Choice of High or Low End Roving Teleconference Robots

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$30,000 will buy a high end life-sized video conferencing system on wheels, giving users a feeling of tele-presence. It sports two 5 Mpixels eyes, full voice telephony to speak and hear and a laser pointer as a finger.

Users can control the sleek five-foot, 35 pound robot remotely from any web browser using nothing more than a mouse. The Wi-Fi-based system aims to let remote users amble around offices that could be across town or across the globe, interacting with fellow employees.


Rovio, by WowWee, has a WiFi enabled mobile webcam that can see, speak and hear from anywhere in the world. This $300 system (Walmart and other places)was covered in the interview this site had with Faysal Sohail, managing partner of the funding venture capital firm CMEA. A separate roving robot with monitor would not be that much more expensive. Seems like it should be possible to upgrade the Rovio to about $1000 and get most of the features of the Anybots QA.

FURTHER READING
Anybots website

Rovio website

User hacked his Rovio to Add Better Lighting

Rovio Tech Specs
Rechargeable NiMH battery pack included
1 x charging dock with built-in TrueTrack beacon
3 x wheel motors
3 x omni-directional wheels
1 x camera motor
1 x VGA CMOS sensor
LED illumination
1 x speaker
1 x built-in microphone
USB connectivity
WiFi connectivity (802.11b and 802.11g)