Talking Heads

Irobot is the company best known for the Roomba, a disk-shaped, autonomous vacuum cleaner. But iRobot has also deployed robots in settings as dangerous as war zones in Iraq and the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Now the company’s founder and CEO, Colin Angle, wants to sell devices for another harsh environment–the office.

It’s part of a broader industry effort to combine robotics and teleconferencing. In 2011 robotics firm VGo launched a telepresence robot that is helping doctors monitor patients after they’ve left the hospital. Vancouver-based Xaxxon Technologies’ Oculus robot is being used in security patrols.

Angle doesn’t foresee the Ava 500 showing up for you at work. Instead, the videoconferencing robot, created with Cisco Systems, is aimed at execs who have to keep tabs on workers or projects around the globe. “My challenge is to create an experience that a professional would find as a legitimate alternative to airplane travel,” says Angle. Though there’s no evidence that face-to-face meetings are doomed, videoconferencing will be a $2.8 billion industry by 2017, according to forecasting firm IDC.

Ava is designed to learn an office layout so that a boss can simply command it, through an app, to travel to a colleague’s workspace. Once there, Ava uses a camera, speakers and a microphone to converse and look around–although backslapping will be a tad difficult. Full autonomy is what makes the Ava “totally unique,” says Andrew Davis of Wainhouse Research. While other robots require the user to steer manually, Ava uses GPS and other technologies to navigate around the office. iRobot’s monthly lease rate is projected at $2,000 to $2,500 when it launches in 2014, which means your new roboboss might just be making more than you.