¨There’s a need for robots that can help people live independently…the number of people over the age of 65 is increasing dramatically,¨ explains the CEO of irobot, Colin Angle in an interview with CNNmoney. Angle further explains that even though many senior citizens may require assistance in their daily living, many of them don’t want to move into assisted living facilities.
Famous for commercializing the famous Roomba Vacuum, irobot has decided to take it a few steps further with their new bot Ava. This robot is mainly being marketed as a home health care assistant as opposed to just a simple hand around the house.

What exactly can it do? For one thing, it can facilitate communication. The screen featured on the front of the bot can be more than just an arbitrary face. Via internet, Ava’s user can connect with someone on an ipad miles away: for example their doctor, at a hospital in the city centre. Ava also boasts much more perception than its vacuuming sibling- thanks to many more layers of software, Ava can navigate through crowded spaces much more precisely. Nevertheless, Eva finds it very embarrassing if it does happen to bump into something- its bottom light flashes pink; how else would a robot blush?

As useful as irobot’s new product may be, there doesn’t seem to be anything that makes Ava specifically fit for healthcare. Telepresence bots like these seem to be all the rage these days so irobot’s got plenty of competition!
If you’re interested in the future of robotics, you may want to check out the European initiative Robot Companions for Citizens. This initiative envisions the implementation of biologically-inspired robotics in a vast range of industries and services ranging from health care to security.

Cris was born with Spina Bifida and had to stop attending school at the age of eight due to night time seizures associated with the condition as well as other severe complications that require treatment from 16 different doctors.

Physically, Cris can’t hold up for a full day at school but mentally he’s right on par with the rest of the class, particularly excelling at math. ¨He’s so willing to learn,¨ explains his teacher Edward. In the past, teachers came to Cris’s home and they also tried placing a stationary web cam in the class but Cris was still missing out on peer interaction.

Cris still works with a teacher from the school every day, but now with the VGo, his educational experience is much fuller. Superintendent of the Mohawk Area School District, Kathy Kwolek, explains: “In the past, we used technology to bring the world to Cris. Now it allows Cris to come to the world”.

You can read more about this story in an article by the Pittsburgh Tribune.

The American company Anybot has created telepresence robots that can be used in variety of scenarios. Whether at home or work, who says you can’t be in two places at once?

A recent article in NPR describes how CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, keeps an Anybot at his office headquarters in California while he’s not there. That way he’s still able to participate in meetings even while being overseas. Although the use of teleconference has become ubiquitous, devices like Anybots can provide users with a much more comprehensive range of interactions.

In the video above Jake Ludington meets a robot personality who is actually Anybot representative, Angela Ward. The Anybots lack arms so they aren’t capable of picking up any objects however, there is a mechanism on the Anybot that could allow Angela to open a door at the Anybot offices in California while she’s in North Carolina. A set of wheels make them mobile and its two eyes are actually cameras that give the user a realistic visual of what’s going on around the robot. They even have  built in lasers which can be used as  pointers during presentations.

Telepresence robots aren’t all about the office, they can get down to business in other ways: the video below features ¨Justin,¨ a robot which was recently presented by researchers from the German Aerospace Agency (DLR) at the 2011 International Conference on Humanoid Robots (IEEE-RAS) in Bled, Slovenia. Operated by a human on earth, Justin may  eventually find work aboard space stations or satellites.