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"Starting today, February 1st, 2011 Anybots is officially shipping its telepresence robots with a slew of new features that could change business travel forever.\r\n\r\nI'm a big fan of the Anybot, who made our epic list of the hottest robots in 2010. Customers who pre-ordered an Anybot for a whopping $15,000 will begin receiving their orders this week. Customers who order at this site today will begin receiving their units in March.\r\n\u201CI\u2019ve been doing videoconferencing for years,\u201D said Stephen Wolfram, a well-known physicist and founder of the computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha who tested the Anybot earlier this year. \u201CBut the mobility of \u201Cbeing a robot\u201D was interesting. It was surprisingly useful to be able to wander around an office as an Anybot. And attending a reception as a robot, people seemed to get used to \u201Cme\u201D surprisingly quickly.\u201D\r\nThe Anybot QB is a telepresence robot that can be remotely controlled from a home computer. Send the Anybot to the conference room or to an employee\u2019s desk to say hi.\u00A0The Anybot\u2019s head displays a live webcam video so employees can see their co-worker\u2019s digital face. Wired describes it as \u201Ca self-propelled Skype-cam on a stick,\u201D while Slashgear said it looked \u201Ca whole lot like a frisbee stuck on top of a Segway.\u201D\r\n\r\nThe Anybot weighs 35 pounds and is 5 feet tall. It runs on eight hours of battery life (perfect for an average work day), supports 802.11g Wi-Fi, comes with a 5-megapixel video camera and zooms around at a top speed of 3.5 miles per hour. A 320 x 240 LCD screen on the bot offers videos, photos and acts as a control panel.\r\n\r\nImagine sitting lying in bed in the wintertime drinking tea at your home in Brooklyn and being able to leap into the Anybot for a meeting in midtown.\u00A0The robot, which I test drove last summer, can be controlled through a web browser with the up and down controls on a computer keyboard. The Anybots' new features include HD zoom, wireless roaming, and two-way streaming video (best turned off if you're in your PJs). Unfortunately it does not have bobble head action.\r\nAfter a few months of beta testing for Anybots, I'm completely in love with it. At first I thought the bot would pay for itself if it could just replace one international trip, but now I realize that the real value is letting me preserve spontaneous interactions at the office even when I'm thousands of miles away. I can jump into the bot at any time and work casually with my team. There's no need to schedule formal meetings or herd everyone around a speaker phone. It's easy to use and it keeps me connected. And it's got a laser beam attached to its head - which, let's be honest, is just good product design. -Phil Libin, Founder &amp;amp;amp; CEO, Evernote\r\nAnybots, based in Mountainview, California, is led by Trevor Blackwell from\u00A0YCombinator and Bob Christopher, formerly CEO of UGOBE/Pleo.\u00A0While they company won't divulge specific numbers, Blackwell, Anybots' Founder &amp;amp;amp; CEO,\u00A0told Forbes last November that the company already had 100 pre-orders for the first Anybots production run. So at $15,000 a pop, the company's first run is looking pretty good.\r\n\r\nA photo of me, @SethPorges and the Anybot at CES 2011 in Las Vegas. And yes, that is an R2D2 suit."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2011/02/01/anybot-begins-shipping-its-telepresence-robots-today/>