Future Bodies: Telepresence Robots and Remote Collaboration

• In Event: Automation and the Transition to the Robotocene: Towards a Robotocene?

Abstract

Telepresence robots – wheel based devices equipped with a screen, camera and microphone that can be controlled remotely to move around a physical space – are increasingly being used to achieve a ‘presence’ in professional and domestic settings in the absence of corporeal mobility. From roving airport ‘helpdesks’, to working from home, to academic conferencing, telepresence robots give us a glimpse of what the ‘Robotocene’ might look like in the future. Drawing on ethnographic observations from attending academic conferences, workshops, reading groups, and other events via a telepresence robot, we conceptualise this arrangement as a digitally mediated extension of the body that – in contrast to standard video conferencing formats – enables certain practices of interaction and collaboration that are contingent on bodily co-presence. We explore how the telepresence robots experience creates opportunities to forego air travel, which is a significant and growing contributor to climate change. How does this technology force us to reconsider our relationship to physical space? And how does our animation and inhabitation of these robots differ from other ‘smart’ robotics? As the technology matures and the experience of ‘being there’ becomes more immersive, how will we learn to live, work, and play with ‘roboticized’ versions of each other in the future?

Author

• Andrew Glover, RMIT University