iRobot: From Sweeping Floors to Running a Company

iRobot, the company founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology best known for the Roomba - terroriser (or transportation device) of cats in living rooms across the nation - has just added a new, pricey, and more corporate-focused robot to its ranks: the Ava 500.

The Ava 500, the younger cousin of the Roomba, has gone corporate. It's a wheeled robot that is designed to autonomously move about corporate offices (and other work locations where a tele-presence is important) and bring videoconferencing on-the-go between remotely located workers and people in the office. So now you can do a "walk-and-talk" at headquarters, or possibly a robot-assisted elevator pitch, from your pajamas in your home office.

The Ava 500, short for Avatar, comes with a high definition video screen, Cisco's Telepresence technology, according to Businessweek, and iRobot's room mapping and moving-about knowhow (object avoidance, included). iRobot corporation sees the Ava 500 enabling "a remote user in New York to travel the halls, meeting with colleagues in Hong Kong and San Francisco 'on the fly' just as he or she would if physically in that location." People who work for corporations that frequently have them flying from place to place will rejoice at this vision.

With the Ava 500's TelePresence EX60 21.5-inch high definition screen and video camera on top of iRobot's autonomous mobile robotics unit, a remote user schedules and controls Ava 500 by using an iPad interface or computer, telling it where to go by taping a location on a map or by choosing a room or employee's name from a list. iRobot's mapping will automatically guide the system where it needs to go.

There are two modes for the remote user - private and public. Public mode displays the remote user's face on the HD screen, while private mode leaves the screen blank. When the user is done with the Ava 500, iRobot's automatic return-to-charge protocol takes over and brings the machine back to its charging station.A version of the Ava 500 will be headed to hospitals soon, too.

No word if newer versions of Ava 500 will sweep the floors or provide transportation to office cats while facilitating conferences.