Servo - March 2011

Then

d n a

NOW

TELEPRESENCE by Tom Carroll

Telepresence is a word that is used quite a bit these days as experimenters attempt to add some sort of two-way television system to their robotic creations. The concept is not new and began to gel in the minds of experimentors soon after the invention of the telephone. Just as Alexander Graham Bell and others of his time desired communications with others at a distance, the enhancement of this scenario would certainly be more complete with the addition of a picture of the other person (or persons) at a distance. These days, we have passed the point of video telephones with Cisco, Google Talk, Skype, iChat, and similar systems on our computers, but the steps to these technologies arrived slowly. Far too slowly for many.

Alexander Graham Bell

76 SERVO 03.2011

Before I discuss the many telepresence robots that have been marketed in the past and those available today, I’d like to look into the history of hearing and seeing at a distance, and different ideas on the system’s design concepts. We all know of Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone that he patented back in 1876. Bell was interested in more than just the telephone. He actually considered his device an intrusive nuisance and never had one in his study.

Born in Scotland in 1847 and already an inventive kid at age 12, he designed and built a corn de-husker for a friend’s father who owned a flour mill. Later in life, he worked on many technical devices including a metal detector and hydrofoil boats — one of which held a speed record of 71 MPH for 10 years. He was also interested in manned kites and heavier-than-air powered aircraft back in 1891 before the Wright’s first manned flights. With an interest in vision systems, he held patents for the use of selenium cells as electrical light and vision devices.

As with another amazing inventor of the same era — Thomas Edison — Bell was also beset with numerous legal hassles with his patents. Through all his problems with his patents and his illnesses from childhood on, it was his interest in the human voice and hearing that captivated him the most. Moving from Scotland to London, then to Canada, and finally to the Boston area in the US, Bell acquired quite a bit of knowledge and background in dealing with the deaf. It was his mother’s slow loss of hearing that led him to the study of acoustics. At age 16, he secured a position of “pupil-teacher” of elocution and music at the Weston House Academy in Scotland. He later worked closely with deaf students and later married one. His interest spanned across speech generation to speech recognition.