Story by Cherlynn Low, Jill Sharr
Don’t Skype or sit on a terrible phone conference with your coworkers or loved ones? A new system could ease the pain, if you have $2,000 to spare. Beam+ is a robot with a built-in monitor, speakers and microphone that you can remotely drive around to be with your friends and coworkers. It will be available for consumers later this year in red, orange, black and grey.
Telepresence robots have been around for awhile, with more recent products mostly taking the guise of an iPad attached to a remote-controlled bot, but Beam’s system is a complete package. It does not require an external display device other than a computer to control the robot.
