Are you the manager of a big company, with very large number of employees which you simply can't supervise in person, but you would like to make your presence felt within the company headquarters? Do you have to leave town on business for a couple of days, and you want to keep an eye on your kids while you're away? Well, regardless of the type of problem you're faced with, you could always try out the Giraffe, a device from the HeadThere company which will allow you to communicate in person with people, even if they're miles away.



The Giraffe is not exactly a robot per se, but more of a remote-controlled mobile video conferencing platform (telepresence device). In sports 2 wide angle cameras with 8X magnification level, a microphone, as well as an adjustable tilt angle so that the user can easily look up or down. The video conferencing and mobility algorithms run on a VIA Mini-ITX main board running at 1Ghz and with 512 MB of RAM. A 512MB Flash-RAM supplies persistent storage. Furthermore, an AVR micro-controller handles hard real-time requirements such as executing motion profiles.



But that's not all. Thus, besides being able to supervise, the Giraffe allows the user to make his presence felt, considering the fact that the device has been fitted with a 14-inch LCD display, as well as a powerful speaker, which plays the images broadcast from a webcam in the user's office.



The base of the device moves using a differential drive movement system. The proprietary suspension system allows the 5-inch wheels to climb small obstacles and rugs while maintaining the stalk in an upright position. Furthermore, all of the drive wheels are driven by high-power motors enabling speeds of up to two meters per second, a brisk walking pace.



As for power, the Giraffe employs 5000 mAh, 21V NiMH batteries, which can be recharged in under two hours by connecting to the docking station. Unfortunately, the provided level of autonomy is not exactly fantastic, namely just around 2 hours.



The Giraffe telepresence robot from HeadThere sells for around 2500 US dollars, which is not exactly an extremely exaggerated price point, especially if we were to take into account just how useful this thing could prove to be for controlling one's workforce.