Developed by Willow Garage, Texai is a remote presence system prototype. The Texai remote presence system lets telecommuters have an in-office presence at any time. Two Willow Garage engineers developed the first Texai while working on the PR2.
Curt Meyers and Dallas Goecker were 2000 miles away and became frustrated with video conferencing and conference table phones. They applied their knowledge and skills of developing the PR2 and battle bots to create the first Texai. Dallas now telecommutes to the office daily while living in Indiana.
Designed for remote presence, Texai leverages the commercially accessible video conferencing software as well as the open source ROS framework. The Texai is developed for rich communication, which is only effective in a real-time, two-way audio/video experience. The Texai ensures private communication and doesn’t support video or audio recording between the participants and the pilot.
Willow Garage
