Meet The Next Generation Of Smartphone-Based Robot Companions

The robot Double can give any telecommuter a physical presence in meetings. The average smartphone today has as much processing power as a 1970s supercomputer--enough (as luck would have it) to act as the hub of a streaming home-audio network, serve as a mobile medical lab, or even run a robot. So now, instead of building robots from scratch, companies can construct models around smartphones. In the past, developing the central processing computer and software to get a robot to do even a simple task cost tens of thousands of dollars. By outsourcing brainpower, companies can cut the final price to hundreds.