Being There

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

This isn't exactly a fan fiction story. Then again maybe it is. It's something that is actually possible today, so I imagined myself in the middle of it.



“Hey, how would you like to visit Japan without leaving the country?” Gordon asked me.

“Yeah, right?” I said. “I've watched some of those video tours on Youtube, but they're still just someone's home movies of their vacation. Boring!”

Gordon and Mitch just laughed. The two nerds had been hacking away at their computers for weeks, and soldering god knows what, after hooking up with some hacker space in Osaka on the Internet. Given the time difference between Boston and Japan, it made for some weird hours on both sides of the world, I'm sure. I didn't quite know what they had been up too, but at least one of them was always in the MIT hacker space lab whenever I visited the place.

For those of you that don't know, Hacker spaces are nerd workshops open to the public. They are often very well equipped with machine tools, electronic test equipment, wood working machinery, photographic equipment, and other maker tools that maker hobbyists wish they could afford. By joining together and pooling their resources (and cash), a group of Makers can set up a place to hack to their hearts content. Once you join a hacker space, the world is your oyster. Through the magic of the Internet, makers all over the world share their ideas. I don't know how the MIT hacker space hooked up with one in Japan, but it was a match made in heaven.

Having two daughters in college in “Bean Town”, plus a brother who worked not far from the Cambridge Massachusetts icon brought my wife and I into Boston often enough these days. Whenever I had free time on my hands, and nowhere else to go, this is where I'd been spending my time.

“OK, I'll byte.” I asked. “Just what have you two been up to?”

“Remote telepresence robots.” Gordon said.

“Yeah, I've heard of those.” I said. “AV cameras mounted on remote controlled segways. Big deal”

“We've gone beyond that.” Mitch said. “Your run of the mill telepresence robots don't allow you to manipulate your environment from a distance, and only interface with two of your senses. We've broken though that limitation.”

Gordon handed me a pair of gloves. The bulky, but flexible hand gear was covered with SMT semiconductors and thin film circuit boards on the outside. Each was powered by a small, rechargeable lithium ion battery.

“Put these on,” he said. “Embedded inside of the finger tips, these gloves have micro motorized tactile feedback transducers. They also have accelerometers inside of each digit to report the movement of your hands. Connection to the control link is via an embedded bluetooth radio connection.”

I tried on the gloves. They felt funky, and tickled a bit. Despite all of the electronics woven into the fabric, they were not quite as heavy as I imagined they'd be, not at all like a pair of knight's gauntlets.

“Now for the visual trickery.” Mitch said. Come here and sit in front of the monitors.

In the corner of the lab they had mounted six 55” LCD 3D televisions sets. Arranged as two rows, in three columns the combined screens gave a panoramic view. Mitch slipped a pair of 3D glasses on my face and suddenly the view in front of me had depth.

“Now you can see where your doppleganger is going, and what he's doing.” Mitch bragged.

Gordon bent down and slipped an ankle bracelet around each of my legs with Velcro straps. “I've just attached accelerometers to your feet. By making short walking movements you will control the robot at the other end of the link.”

“Now I get it!” I laughed. “You've given me tactile feedback with the robot's hands haven't you? Also 3D vision thought its eyes, and stereo sound though its ears.” I said pointing to the stereo speakers mounted near the TV monitors.

“Yes, and those wireless glasses you're wearing also have accelerometers in them.” Gordon told me. “Tilt you head and the robot will move his head likewise. You will have total control of the bot on the other side of the world. Our friends in Japan are dying to try this system out and they are setting up a special demo for us. If you come back after midnight, when it will be around noon time over there, you can have a daytime demo walking the streets in Takarazuka Japan.”

It was dark in the streets when I returned to Cambridge later that evening to visit the hacker space. Sure enough, Mitch and Gordon were waiting for me. They were in teleconference on Skype with their counterparts in Japan, apparently adjusting parameters on the Internet link between the robot over there, and the human interface in the MIT hacker space. I was amused at how they had manged to communicate, each side having picked up just enough of the other's language. It was a mishmash of Japanese and English.

“OK, we'll ready for you!” Gordon said as he put the put the apparatus I'd been already shown onto my body. This time he also placed a pair of Bose wireless stereo headphones on my ears.

“This will give you better binaural fidelity than the monitor speakers.” he explained.

I stood in front of the array of television sets and looked around. As I turned my head the view shifted as my robotic eyes thousands of miles away moved in step. I took a few steps, while standing in place, and found myself moving forward. Strangely I actually recognized where I was, though I'd never been there in my life. I'd seen pictures of the building now in front of me.

“Hey, how did you guys know?” I asked.

“Itchi suggested it.” Mitch said. “His brother works there.”

Under my direction the robot entered the Tezuka Osmau Manga Museum. The museum had a modest crowd of visitors and they seemed to be staring at me, or rather the robot that I was controlling. I would have thought that the Japanese would be familiar with telepresence robots, though I knew that according to the guys, this one was different. I lifted my hand in front of my face, and the robot on the other end did likewise. Now for the first time I could see what the appendages of my mechanical self looked like. Small, childlike hands enclosed in gloves to cover the robotic digits.
Itchi's hand placed a ball into the robot's and I could feel it! I slowly opened and closed my fingers and I could rotate that ball in my hand!

“My god!” I told Gordon. “This is incredible!”

“Like I said,” Mitch bragged, “we've given you tactile feedback.”

“The only thing missing is smell!” I laughed.

“We're working on that!” Gordon answered.

I spend several hours walking around the museum. I was literally there! It was eerie. The one thing that bothered me was the look on the faces of everyone that I passed by. Strange smirks, giggles, and guffaws.

“Gordon,” I asked. “What does this robot look like?”

“Actually we don't know.” Gordon said. “We've only seen the inner details of the mechanical and electronic parts. Itchi said they were working on a skin to cover it, but other than on the arms, which you've seen I don't know what they've done.”

“Judging by the looks on peoples faces, I can only imagine.” I thought. “Maybe it resembles the terminator.”

Somewhere in the hallway, I spotted a full length mirror on the wall. Taking advantage of it, I walked my mechanical self towards it and turned to look. A grin crossed my face and I couldn't stop laughing.
No wonder the telepresence bot was getting strange looks from the crowd, considering where we were! Itchi and his cohorts in the Osaka hacker space had built themselves a four foot high humanoid remote controlled robot that was the spitting image of the little statue I'd passed by on entering the museum. No wonder the crowd couldn't take their eyes off of it. After all their hero had just walked past them!

I'd spent the past few hours doing an electronic cosplay as Tetsuwan Atom.