I have to start this review with a brief confession: I don’t really know any of my colleagues. I started working at The Verge in December last year, but as I live in London, I’ve only ever met the members of our UK team. All two of them. There’s been a few group Skype calls with the New York and San Francisco offices, but for the most part I either talk to people on Slack or over email. This isn’t unusual for a job in the media of course, but my bosses decided that it was time for me to get a little more involved. To have some of that good old-fashioned human interaction. Their solution? They gave me a robot, of course.

Meet my Double, a telepresence bot from Double Robotics that combines the fun of a remote-controlled car with the thrill of videoconferencing. It’s best described as an iPad on a Segway because, well, that’s basically what it is. There is a pair of squat wheels at the bottom and a telescoping pole that extends from three feet to five feet tall. At the top of this, there’s a jig for an iPad (sold separately unfortunately), and the whole arrangement is self-balancing. You log in like a Skype call — either via a mobile app or website — and then you're presented with controls to move the bot around, while a loudspeaker attachment lets you sound your barbaric yawp over the cubicles of the world.

THE first time i actually logged in, no one even noticed me appear At least, that’s the theory. The first time I actually logged in to the robot, no one even noticed me appear. Sure, anyone glancing around the office might have seen my slightly quizzical face pop into existence in midair, but the whole thing was really discrete. This wasn’t like getting suited up in Pacific Rim; I just clicked a couple of buttons, and there I was, operating a robot. I looked around at first but everyone was busy working. Someone at the other end of the office caught my eye, but by the time the video had registered my hasty smile they’d looked away. I tried saying hello, but it turned out the speakers on the bot weren’t working (we eventually had to get a replacement), and I was left on the wall, quietly nodding to myself like the most boring painting in Hogwarts. In the end, I had to settle for messaging the person nearest to me on Slack. So much for the personal touch. I may as well have been on Skype Eventually, I managed to arrange a chat about an article with one of my editors. Again, we had to message beforehand to find a place to talk (chattering in the middle of the office was a no-no), but once we’d settled ourselves in a cupboard, the benefits of telepresence became obvious. That is, I’d forgotten what it was like to actually see a person and hear their tone of voice while talking about a piece of writing. However, if I’d really wanted this advantage, I may as well have been on Skype. At least then I wouldn’t have to make people hold the door open for me as I rolled in to speak to them. The Double was also pretty inconsistent with audio and occasionally introduced slight delays that turned conversations into stumbling encounters. Eventually, I managed to arrange a chat about an article with one of my editors. Again, we had to message beforehand to find a place to talk (chattering in the middle of the office was a no-no), but once we’d settled ourselves in a cupboard, the benefits of telepresence became obvious. That is, I’d forgotten what it was like to actually see a person and hear their tone of voice while talking about a piece of writing. However, if I’d really wanted this advantage, I may as well have been on Skype. At least then I wouldn’t have to make people hold the door open for me as I rolled in to speak to them. The Double was also pretty inconsistent with audio and occasionally introduced slight delays that turned conversations into stumbling encounters.

This is one of the problems with telepresence: it’s been around for years, but it’s still not clear why anyone needs to use it. Companies like Double say they offer "a physical presence at work or school when you can’t be there in person," but for most office jobs this is unnecessary anyway — a combination of video calls, email, and online software like Google Docs is all you need to work from home. Meanwhile, anyone in a profession which does depend on their physical presence will know that even the world’s most advanced robots are laughably inadequate when it comes to things like physical dexterity. It doesn’t help that telepresence bots are temperamental and expensive. Even the relatively simple Double costs $2,499, and that's without buying an iPad to actually make it work. "You're not just passive; you can move around and explore." Despite this lack of an obvious use case, there’s something undeniably attractive about the idea of being able to be physically elsewhere. Telepresence bots are being sold to hospitals, for example, to let doctors do the rounds remotely (although there’s no concrete data on how frequently these robots are actually used). This same level of interaction could also be achieved if the nurse simply carried a laptop with them, but I imagine there’s something vaguely reassuring for patients if the doctors seem in control. Ken Goldberg, a professor of robotics at the University of California, Berkeley, claims that telepresence’s appeal comes from its sense of empowerment. "One of the benefits of the robots is that they enhance the sense of agency, of being an agent, in the remote environment," he said in an interview with Spectrum. "You are not just a passive conversationalist; you can actually move around and explore." If the Double wasn’t practical for actual work, I’d hoped that the sense of physical presence would help me socialize more naturally with my coworkers. I’d imagined myself trundling around our New York offices like a sociable R2-D2: snapping jokes, exchanging gossip, and making those finger gun gestures I’ve seen cool people use in the movies. It wasn’t until I actually logged into the robot and looked around the office that I remembered that of course, no one would ever act like this, even in person. A telepresence robot may give you the ability to move around and explore in a remote environment, but you’re still beholden to all the usual social conventions of the 21st century office. People didn't really talk much anyway. Most work was happening in Slack, and so was most socializing.

This was my second problem with telepresence: it’s just not that great for getting to know people with. Even if it was normal to be wandering around the office bothering people, doing so using an ungainly robot would be beyond the pale. There’s something about the thought of interrupting people via an iPad on a stick that doesn't seem right. "I couldn’t be bothered to disturb you in person," it says, "so here’s my idiot robot avatar. Yep, that’s right, you have to talk to me normally even though we both know this is a deeply silly situation." It wasn’t like I could use the bot to grab lunch either — not unless whomever I went with could provide a Wi-Fi hotspot for me and was happy running interference on the sidewalk. Other normal chatting opportunities — like taking a walk down a corridor for example — were made impossible simply by the lack of peripheral vision. Between that and always having to turn to see what’s to the side of you, using the Double felt like playing Doom. But in an office. People were taking pictures. Someone put a hat on me. My triumph, such as it was, came at an impromptu office pizza party. I’d just finished an edit and decided to roll up as everyone grabbed a slice for lunch. I zoomed towards the table as fast as I could and for about five minutes the whole thing was kinda funny. I think. Here I was, a face on an iPad, 3,500 miles away from my colleagues and making jokes about if there was a way for someone to feed me a slice of pepperoni pizza over the internet. People were taking pictures. Someone put a hat on me. Success, right? But, this leads me to problem number three with telepresence, or half-problem number three: the bot you’re inhabiting shapes how people relate to you. It might sound silly, but think about the rolling ball robot that appeared in the new Star Wars trailer: that thing was onscreen for all of two seconds, but it was long enough for us to think, "Oh my, that’s a cute robot." The Double is cute, too. It’s dinky and kind of earnest looking, and I can’t imagine a manager being taken seriously if they were using one to keep employees on their toes. However, being cute was also beneficial. Because the bot has the motor skills of a toddler, people were happy to help steer me around difficult terrain and winced when I accidentally rolled into a door. A status-obsessed manager might hate people taking pity on them, but for me it was just convenient that they cared. I can see this look-after-baby effect being annoying if you had to base your entire office presence on using one if these bots, but it was certainly helpful in small doses. Telepresence might be good in small doses Of course, no one’s going to use telepresence in this way, at least not any time soon. If bots of the Double’s calibre do find a place in offices then it’ll probably be as supplementary tools. They won’t be necessary, but they might find a niche — getting rolled out for international meetings, for example, or when sickness or bad weather forces people to stay at home. I can imagine people joking about "having to take the bot to work," but actually enjoying the experience — especially if the concept's familiar and they’ve already made friends around the office. Because for all the ingrained silliness of telepresence, there is something deeply satisfying about pressing a button here and having something move, at your command, over there. Extending human agency is a lot of what technology is about, and as the bots get better and cheaper, it’ll become more tempting to give telepresence a try. As for me, I’m happy enough sticking with email, Slack, and the casual voyeurism of Twitter to get to know my colleagues. As mediums of communication, these might lack the subtler cues of face-to-face chats, but at least I can use gifs and emoji when I need to add a little interpersonal pizzaz. When telepresence bots can do the same, maybe I’ll give them another go.



