Telepresence robots is an innovative idea that could have serious implications for professionals in the next few years.

Telebots are mobile machines that allow users to converse with people in a different location through video conferencing. The robot has cameras, screens, speakers and microphones to allow remote users to interact with those on-site. Best of all the user can move them around the location giving it an advantage over video conferencing where there's only one mounted camera.

Telepresence robots have many uses aside from the cool factor of owning a robot as your own avatar. Businesses can use it to have more mobility beyond the conference room. Out of the country executives could still wander the hallways checking up on unsuspecting employees with a telebot. Telebots can also provide a way for factories to be consistently supervised. Some factories are hostile to humans or are remote and time consuming to travel to. Telepresence robots can visually inspect factories on a more frequent basis.

Robots can also be used by doctors and nurses to monitor patients at home. Children's Hospital Boston is already sending telebots from Vgo Communications Inc. home with discharged patients as a way to observe the patients as they recover at home. The 4.5 foot robots are controlled by nurses and doctors back at the hospital. The robots are equipped with audio sensors, articulating cameras, speakers and a video screen for a face. The telebots allow patients to consult their doctors or nurses and collect visual data to spot signs of a post-op complication. The initial pilot program only has 40 patients with in-home telebots but if the program is effective the hospital may increase its telebots and start sending patients home early so that the routine post-op observation can be done at home with a robot companion.

Telepresence robots can bridge distances using visual communication but a group of Japanese scientists aren't satisfied with just vision alone, they want to build a robot that will give humans more physical immersion in remote locations.

"Vision is not enough," said Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology's Advanced Interdisciplinary Electric Research Center. "We have to provide tactile feedback to make him or her more involved, and also motion feedback so we can feel more like we are human on the robot side."

Tsetserukou, along with computer science and engineering professor Jun Miura and PhD candidate Sugiyama Junichi, have developed a teleprescence robot called NAVIgoid that sends physical feedback from the robot to the human controller.

NAVIgoid has two built-in cameras to transmit visual data and laser range finders to navigate its surroundings. The human controller has a virtual reality eye shield that allows the controller to see through the robot's eyes. The user also has a wide belt that controls the robot through movement. With the NAVIgoid platform the human users will physically feel like they're walking where the robot is moving. Currently the team is working on giving the robot more human-like features.