Robot Reachy: VR operation from the home office

The French start-up Pollen Robotics has further developed its open-source robot and is showing a version of the Reachy robot that can be remotely controlled via virtual reality at CES 2021.

A theoretical and at least short-term solution to many of the problems associated with a pandemic, such as home office duty, would be robots that you control from home.

At last year's Consumer Electronics Show, Pollen Robotics presented the robot Reachy, which can be programmed and used for research tasks, but also for delivery services, for example. At the purely digital CES 2021, the start-up has now presented a new version of Reachy with better cameras and processor. Reachy can be operated via Virtual Reality (Guide).

Complex robot interaction via VR

In a video, Pollen Robotics demonstrates how it works. The video signal is sent to VR glasses via cameras in the robot's head. It is not known how high the latency of the video transmission is (i.e. the time from input to output of the command). However, the robot head moves exactly with the headset movement.

However, the bottle is already open - it may not yet be possible to remove a screw cap easily. Different gripping pressure could play a role here, which is difficult to simulate via a controller.

Even more robots

The idea of remotely operating robots is not new. In 2020, the Japanese supermarket chain Familymart announced that it would let its employees stock shelves using VR-controlled robots. While the video demo looked reasonably convincing, speed is a major point of criticism, as it was with Reachy: Interaction via the robot is ponderous at best.

The British start-up Extend Robotics also specialises in teleworking and wants to have bartenders work from the home office, for example. Robots are to be used for services, in healthcare and in the energy sector by employees at home - or even function completely autonomously.

In practice, however, the technology is nowhere near ready, even if it is entertaining to watch the remote-controlled Reachy operate a microwave correctly. The price is also quite steep: a Reachy package costs 17,000 dollars.

Source: Mixed / Youtube