When a Robot Becomes the Life of the Party

When Richard Garriott de Cayeux threw a costume party the night before his wedding in Paris, his 82-year-old mother dressed up as an Indian princess and attended as a robot.

Helen Mary Garriott wasn't strong enough to make the long trip from her home in Las Vegas. So Mr. Garriott de Cayeux went looking for alternatives. The one he hit upon was a portable robot about the size of a canister vacuum cleaner with a telescoping neck, binocular-shaped eyes and a screen for a forehead.

More people are using telepresence robots that allow humans to be right there -- even when they're far away. WSJ's Andy Jordan checks out one San Francisco space with a regular office mate in Brussels.

The staff at his Austin, Texas, computer games company Portalarium Inc. tested it out, then shipped it off to the wedding. And, voilà!, his mother was in Paris—virtually.

To pull off the costume party, Ms. Garriott had a photograph of herself in her outfit—leather chaps, headband and feather—mounted on a five-foot piece of cardboard that was attached to the robot. She then logged on from home, appearing on the screen to chat with guests.

The next day, for the wedding itself, Ms. Garriott wore a blue dress and bluestone necklace, and held her cat. Her wheeled proxy cruised among the guests, allowing her to make conversation and watch the proceedings. Staff people helped the robot up and down the stairs of the French château where the ceremony took place.

Futuristic Robots, Past and Present

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Richard Garriott de Cayeux

Richard Garriott de Cayeux with his mother Mary Helen Garriott and new wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux at the wedding in Paris. Ms. Garriott attended via robot but guests signed her outfit, which was printed on cardboard.

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Attendees autographed Ms. Garriott's cardboard outfit. When her robot rolled to the middle of the dance floor, she was encircled by kids and family, amid disco lights and flashing lasers. She turned her robootie back and forth, the easiest move to maneuver by tapping arrows on her keyboard. Forward and backward movement, meanwhile, was a bit harder to coordinate because of the lag time half way around the globe, Mr. Garriott de Cayeux says.

"My mother was kind of being R2D2 in the center of the dance floor," Mr. Garriott de Cayeux says, laughing. "It was my most special, fun moment of the whole time of her participating as a robot."

Improvements in technology for getting machines to talk and move about, as well as a drop in the price of components, have robots rolling into the consumer mainstream.

Ms. Garriott used a QB robot from a Mountain View, Calif., company called Anybots Inc. The QB sells for $9,700 and costs about $3,000 for an eight-hour rental. Its eyes glow blue when a user signs on, just like the EVE robot in the Pixar movie WALL-E.

Other companies, like VGo Communications Inc., in Nashua, N.H; Xaxxon Technologies, in Vancouver; and iRobot Corp., in Bedford, Mass., have introduced personal-presence robots that range in price from $270 for a simple model that connects to a laptop to $50,000 for a machine that could allow doctors to log in and diagnose illnesses remotely.

Technology company executives are prominent among the early adopters. Bert Navarrete, co-founder and managing partner of Tigerlabs LLC, a company that helps start-ups get off the ground, ordered an Anybot robot to create an office presence for his offsite workers, including a developer in Hungary.

QB robot

Tigerlabs ended up using the robot, which it named Einstein, to drum up business by taking it for walks around Princeton, N.J., where the company is based.

To use the robot, a co-worker went to the Anybots website, clicked on a tab that says "Drive" and logged in. That opened a small, Skype-like window in the browser with shots from cameras facing forward and down. The arrow keys move the robot forward, left and right. The shift key pans a camera down, and the mouse controls a laser pointer.

The experiment wasn't perfect—the company dispatched three people to protect the robot from curbs and other hazards—but it certainly didn't go unnoticed. Within minutes, Einstein had a following. Tourists and others snapped pictures, and a police officer yelled across the street, "What is that thing?"

Mr. Navarrete sent the robot out for tacos ordered by the co-worker, who remained in the office. The store manager gave Einstein the tacos on the house.

That wasn't the first time a telebot entered academia. Lauren Robinson, a student at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins, Colo., uses a VGo robot to attend classes because she has a serious allergy that keeps her out of school.

The robot, which cost $6,000, looks like a big clothespin on wheels with a screen for a face. For her 15th birthday, Ms. Robinson's friends surprised her by dressing it up with green and silver bows, blue and silver ribbon, and a big "Happy Birthday" balloon.

There have been some glitches—as when the robot dropped its connection in the middle of class, announcing, "Call from Lauren Robinson" when she tried to reconnect. And Lauren is still getting the hang of operating the VGo, which bumps into walls and people all the time.

"I say, 'Sorry,' and they say, "Oh, excuse me…person?" Lauren says.

Amanda Jones, Lauren's English teacher, plays host to the robot and its charging station in her classroom. She says it took about 10 days to get the hang of always leaving her door open so "Lauren" could enter and leave as necessary. A couple of times, in the beginning, Lauren had to send Ms. Jones an email with the subject line "Help!" and the message: "I'm stuck."

There have also been instances when the robot battery died, leaving it stuck in the middle of a hallway. That merits an email like, "I'm stuck in the North Wing," which sends Ms. Jones jogging over to pick up the 20-pound device and carry it back to her room, where the VGo can charge.

Elsewhere, there's already even been a case of robot hijacking. Philip Rosedale, co-founder of Coffee & Power, a business that rents space to start-ups in San Francisco, bought a VGo robot last month and decorated it with a mustache and photo of actor David Hasselhoff wearing a leather jacket and Speedo swimsuit.

One day recently, he was on a call when he heard his kids' voices in the office. Turns out, they were in the habit of logging on and joking with his employees

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com