First Word:

Thanks to the interest of a faculty member, the efforts of our networking exports, and Suitable Technologies for letting us try out their technology, I’ve had the chance to try out the Beam Pro telepresence robot several times.

My first time in the saddle, I happened to be working at home mid afternoon during the week. Despite the constant flurry of emails, IM chats, etc, I didn’t enjoy feeling the detachment that I felt being at home. Having just been added as a user to our BeamPro that day, I decided to try and figure out how to get back in the office, when I couldn’t be.

The device works by connecting you (whereever you are) with the robot via a custom Beam software package that you download for free. Download and setup took less than 10 minutes – a large chunk of which was spent watching a tutorial video reminding you not to do such obvious things as a) drive the Beam down stairs b) drive the Beam into a pool and c) intentionally run into people using the Beam (though I did learn that the pro model weighs more than 100 pounds).

From there, you select the device you click to “Beam In” to a robot you have access too and you come closer to the movie Avatar than any of us have ever been.

The natural response is a bit of unease at first. The BeamPro is an expensive piece of hardware so you feel a sense of caution as you are not quite sure how fast it moves, how it handles, etc. But that response is really just mental. The Beam itself is almost absurdly easy to use for the freedom it affords you. Navigation (turning and movement) is controlled entirely by your computer’s 4 arrow keys. You can adjust the zoom on the onboard camera, the speaker volume to project your voice and the onboard microphone sensitivity (to hear others) with simple sliders. The control software shows 3 video feeds – the main window which is a panoramic view of what is in front of you, a view straight down at the wheels which help when navigating close quarters, and a view of what you look like on the device’s main screen. And that is about the entirety of what the Beam does. The rest is just about being somewhere you are not.

During my 15 minute jaunt around the Rider Building, I wandered the halls (thanks to the kindly aid of a coworker, who opened the doors for me), talked with passerbys and stopped in for a conversation with colleague. The relative silence of the device as it moves actually lead me to creep up on him unintentionally – there is no knocking on a door to announce yourself while operating the Beam. The semi-fish eye lens on the device does not fully capture the angle of human peripheral visual, but its close enough to feel natural, both when you are talking with someone and when you are trying to move in 3D space. As we talked, 2 other folks stopped by his office and I found myself very naturally turning the Beam back and forth to face the speaker.

Once you calibrate your volume settings, you just talk. You move. You “stop by offices” or “go look at something with someone”. It is incredibly artificial and yet all very natural. Its not the same as physically being somewhere, but its also not as far away as you’d think. I came away from the experience amazingly impressed.

At a University like Penn State, bringing in experts from across the country and the world is not necessarily a novel experience. But bringing them in with a physical sense of presence is new, and could have a significant impact in a number of fields. I believe plans are in motion to provide one of these devices to the Hershey College of Medicine. Imagine being able to literally bring in a consulting physician from anywhere in the world with you on rounds? Arvind Rangaswamy, the faculty member who originally turned me on to the Beam, noted that the device could be transformative in studio fields like architecture. What about performance areas like theater, dance, or music? Could the Beam play a role in job interviews? What about consulting? Or imagine the ability for students to check out a beam and join their peers on a global experience, remotely?

Make no mistake, the Beam is equal parts eye catching and potentially transformative. But its important not to lose sight of the fact that the Beam’s value is ultimately in the freedom of movement it provides, which means that to fully take advantage of the technology, it needs to be in a situation which requires said movement. For the more mundane telepresence needs, like jumping into a conference room, the Beam amounts an 18 wheeler when you need a golf cart. Thats not to say it can’t do the job, it’s just likely more machine than you probably need.

But the Beam’s freedom of movement is not unlimited, which does narrow it’s utility a bit. To be safe, it’s always wise to have a physically present handler available to help resolve any potential hurdles the Beam and it’s controller might run into. While the platform is remarkable stable and responsive, it is subject to the whims of wi-fi, which means if you are trying to use it in an environment with less than perfect connectivity, you may end up with a 100 pound paperweight in the middle of a session. Even in good wi-fi conditions, the nature of the Beam showcases technology limitations that we don’t normally think about, for example, how good is the WiFi connectivity in your elevators?

Speaking of which, getting into an elevator for a device that can’t push buttons requires a bit of human intervention. So do things like opening doors or navigating uneven terrain (aka a thick power cord laying across the floor). It feels a little nit-picky to critique the Beam for such limitations, but they are real and it’s important to consider them if you are interested in leveraging the device.