Calling itself a Tiny Robotic Avatar, PadBot T1 is the latest telepresence robot from Juppi Tech. The goal behind PadBot T1 is pretty much what all telepresence robots strive to do: let you remotely roam your home when you are away, so you can satisfy your curiosity about various things like what’s fido doing, did you turn off the faucet and lights et cetera. In addition, it allows you to follow a subject, so the person you are FaceTiming or Skyping on the end need not to be stuck to the same spot. In fact, given the power to maneuver, the days where objects hindering your view are gone and that’s awesome, since fido certainly won’t know how to move a potted plant.
But the real selling point here (well, not that it hasn’t been done) is portability. The device diminutive size allows it to be slipped into a backpack and transported to anywhere you want to go. An onboard battery affords up to 12 hours of operation and this same battery is also able to keep the mounted smartphone juiced while in use. The only caveat is, it is tiny and we can imagine you probably can’t see as much as you will like when it comes to vertical space. When on the ground, you did be looking up the whole time if the person is walking, which will feel kind of weird.
One way to counter this is to leave it on a counter or table, but that will limit the area you can roam. Though, you’d be glad that built-in sensor will ensure this baby will not commit unintended suicide. Additionally, sensor upfront make sure it won’t knock into anything or anyone as it roams freely around. Aesthetically, there’s nothing to shout about, really, but at under 100 bucks, you can’t really complain much. As far as tech goes, we’d say this is more a toy, but we won’t discredit it entirely cos’ I can always use some help to remotely patrol the home or office when I am away.
That also brings us to another concern: it needs to be charged at some point and unlike robotic vacuum cleaner, it don’t seem to have a dock where it can return to recharge itself when the juice is low. That said, if you are going away for more than a day, it is going to out of commission at the end of day one and leaves you with nothing to see. On top of that, you will need an additional smartphone for it work. However, if you are using it as a means of communicating with another person, then perhaps those ‘issues’ would be non-issues.
PadBot T1 is on Kickstarter and it will need to raise another 10K in next 20 days or so to see fruition, but in case it made it, backers can expect to PadBot T1 at their doorsteps as soon as October this year. Keep going for the product pitch video to learn more.
Images courtesy of Juppi Tech.
submitted via TIP US page.
