????機器人遠程呈現技術是那些總是離我們說遠不遠、說近不近的技術中的一種。未來主義者說它會改變一切。但是盡管近年來已經有些設計得不錯的遙控機器人技術投放市場（比如Vgo和Double Robotics），但是還沒有哪種解決方案的先進性和用戶友好性能夠滿足主流需要。這種機器人可以讓人類操控者遙控操作一個自己的機器人“化身”，從而讓這個機器人在另一個城市、另一個國家乃至是另一個星球上的某個環境中移動，并與其他人進行互動。比如說一個身在芝加哥的公司經理，可以借由這種技術實時參觀托皮卡市的一個工廠。但目前從很多方面上看，遙控機器人還只是一種高價的玩具。

????位于馬薩諸塞州貝德福德市的iRobot公司相信，它已經改變了這種局面。這家公司最出名的產品是一款可愛的自動拖地機器人Roomba。這家公司長期以來一直非常了解客戶的需求，不斷完善自己的技術，同時為終端用戶生產正確的產品，不管這個用戶是有潔癖的家庭主婦，還是在阿富汗拆地雷的美國海軍拆彈專家。（iRobot確實生產拆彈機器人。）今年早些時候，iRobot公司悄悄地在北美的7家醫院里推出了一款名叫RP-VITA的遠程醫療機器人（其中6家在美國，1家在墨西哥城）。在現實醫療環境中，人們怎樣看待醫療機器人的表現，這個問題不僅對iRobot公司和它的技術伙伴InTouch Health公司來說意義重大，對遠程機器人這門技術來說也是一樣。

????iRobot公司的CEO科林?安格爾說：“我們制造機器人和研究遠程呈現技術已經超過10年了。我們意識到一個問題，那就是，一個很酷的原型產品和一款真正的產品之間存在巨大的區別。”安格爾還表示，該公司終于研發出了RP-VITA這款真正的遙控機器人產品。如果它能在快節奏、甚至有時極為繁雜的醫院環境中適應下來，那么像RP-VITA這種機器人就沒有理由不能適應其他任何環境。RP-VITA的成功可能標志著一股新潮流的開始。

????醫療界是一個不錯的試驗田來率先使用這門技術。現代醫學的專門化已經發展到了非常復雜的地步，目前醫學這個大框架下已經涵蓋了150多個被學界認可的專科和亞專科，而在20世紀中葉時大概還只有20個專科左右。遠程醫學機器人正是在這個領域找到了巨大的增長空間。位于加州圣芭芭拉市的InTouch Health公司為醫療行業開發的界面、應用和遠程呈現解決方案現已應用到了700多家醫院中，使醫生們（一般是城市大醫院的專家）可以與病床上的病人通過音頻和視頻直播進行遠程電視電話會診，還能與護士和病人進行交流。

????Robotic telepresence remains one of those technologies that is always lingering just on the horizon; it's going to change everything, the futurists say, just as soon as it gets here. But while several clever telerobotics solutions have come to market in recent years (Vgo and Double Robotics for instance), no solution has yet been both sophisticated and user-friendly enough for the mainstream. These robots -- designed to give a remote human operator control of a mobile surrogate robot so that, for instance, a company manager in Chicago can virtually tour a factory floor in Topeka -- allow users to move around an environment and interact with people and objects on the other side of the city, country, or planet. But for the most part, telerobots remain high-priced toys.

????Bedford, Mass.,-based iRobot (IRBT) believes it's finally changed that. The company -- perhaps best known for its adorable, automated floor-sweeping Roomba robots -- has a long, established record of understanding its customer, adequately maturing its technologies, and producing the right solution for its end users, whether that user is an immaculately clean apartment-dweller or a Navy explosives ordnance disposal specialist disarming IEDs in Afghanistan. (iRobot builds those robots too.) Earlier this year iRobot quietly rolled out its RP-VITA telemedicine robot in seven North American hospitals (six in the U.S. and one in Mexico City), and how they are received in the hospital environment could spell big things not only for iRobot and its technology partnerInTouch Health, but for telerobotics at large.

????"We've been building robots and working on the remote presence problem for well over a decade, and the one thing we have come to realize is that the difference between a cool prototype and a product is huge," says iRobot CEO Colin Angle. In RP-VITA, Angle says, the company has finally developed a real telerobotics product, and if it can survive the rigors of the fast-paced, sometimes frenetic hospital environment, there's no reason why robots like RP-VITA couldn't work anywhere. Success for RP-VITA could mark the beginning of a trend.

????Telemedicine isn't a bad place to start. Modern medicine has sprawled into an often confusing array of specializations -- currently there are something like 150 different recognized medical specialties and sub-specialties; at the middle of the last century there were roughly a dozen -- and it's here that telemedicine has found a great deal of room for growth. Santa Barbara, Calif.,-based InTouch Health creates interfaces, apps, and remote presence solutions for the health care industry that are now in more than 700 hospitals, allowing doctors -- generally specialists at larger, urban hospitals -- to digitally teleconference themselves to a patient's bedside and converse with both nurses and patients over live audio and video connections.