iRobot shifts from developing house cleaners and police robots to penetrate the corporate industry with its new robot--AVA 500.
iRobot Corporation is an advanced technology company manufacturing robots headquartered in Delaware. Its first series of robots Roomba, a vacuum cleaner which came out 2002, followed by different types of robots used on different fields such as the military and police robots, medical robots, and research robots. As of 2012, it has deployed over eight million home robots and 5,000 security robots. They also have robots used by the government to gather data from nuclear sites and underwater oil spills.
This year, iRobot attempts to penetrate the corporate industry by teaming up with Cisco to develop AVA 500—the office robot. This robot is equipped with Public Cisco Telepresence commonly used by businesses for virtual meetings and presentations especially if the attendees are from different places. The two technology companies have signed up an agreement to work together to make AVA 500 successful in the market.
The AVA 500 is expected to redesign the way meetings are conducted in the office wherein people don’t have to leave their workstations to go somewhere else to attend a meeting. Unlike a regular telepresence or video call, the AVA 500 has the ability to roam around like what a normal person would do during presentations or meetings. The iRobot-Cisco tandem is anticipating a lot of following for this robot since businesses have been looking at ways to lessen their expenses.
iRobot integrated Cisco’s Telepresence EX60 personal video endpoint in its mobile robotics platform. The robot is equipped with a 21.5-inch screen where people would see the face of the user which can be controlled using an Apple iPad interface. It may also stand or sit by adjusting the height of the display. The user can also opt to remain ‘private’ where the screen will be blank or go ‘public’ for everyone to see his face. iRobot programmed the unit to automatically go to the nearest charging station after the meeting to ensure it has enough power for the next meeting and guaranteed to avoid any obstacles such as walls or people.
See AVA 500 personally tomorrow, June 12, in the InfoComm 2013 Conference and Expo in Orlando, Fla. You may also visit the website to watch a video presentation of the robot. It will be fully available to the market in early 2014.
