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Remote Work Not Just for White-Collar Jobs Anymore


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A remotely operated robot stocks shelves in a Lawson convenience store in Tokyo, Japan.

In many industries, remote-work technologies go well beyond mere communications and pixel-pushing.

Credit: Telexistence

Technology that allows people to perform physical work remotely is proliferating across a host of occupations.

In Tokyo, workers miles away control humanoid robots to stock convenience store shelves via a virtual reality interface; the robots, built by Telexistence, are the world's first commercial application of telepresence.

Telexistence's Model T robot is built from relatively inexpensive parts, to ensure the teleoperated machine and remote worker cost less than an equivalent physically present human.

The company hopes a system fully puppeteered by humans will collect sufficient training data to teach an artificial intelligence to assume at least some of its tasks.

Another form of telepresence lets front-line workers use smart glasses to share what they are seeing with remote experts, who can consult and send images to assist with problems.

From The Wall Street Journal
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Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA


 

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