CNN produced a great 360 video behind the scenes of the newest exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Double 360 Camera Dolly was used in a few shots to help bring motion to otherwise stationary shots.
Essential tools for telepresence admins.
Scheduling, Security, and Reporting.
We are happy to announce that Fleet Management is now available for all customers to try free for 14 days! These tools have been in beta testing for a while now and they have become essential to rolling out and managing fleets of 2 or more robots.
Fleet Management delivers on the most requested features from customers over the past year. Robot admins are absolutely loving it – and now is your chance to try it too!
Robot Reservations
Now you can share your robots with people throughout your organization and issue Visitor Passes to temporary drivers from one central dashboard on the web. Learn More
User Access Control
Remotely manage access to each robot on a per-user basis. You can easily onboard new users with mass email invitations, magic email domain (everyone @yourcompany.com), and Single Sign-On (SSO). Learn More
Call Log Reporting
Ensure that audit and compliance requirements are met with the use of the Call Log reporting feature. Learn More
Try Fleet Management Now
Double Robotics was featured on the latest episode of Angie Tribeca on TBS Network! In this episode, titled "Turn Me On, Geils," a roboticist is found dead and Angie Tribeca and her partner Jay Geils question the only person who has any insight -- the roboticist's assistant, Vanessa -- who takes a liking to Geils. Check out the episode (Season 3, Episode 4) on Amazon Video or Hulu!
A new study from University of Zurich and University of Leipzig found that utilizing mobile remote presence technologies (MRP) amongst a distributed team creates the same effect as working with team members in-person. The study, led by Dr. Erik Wende of University of Zurich, involved monitoring the mobile remote presence system for a distributed team based in Germany over a 12-month period. They concluded that, after an adjustment period, the local and remote team members worked as if they were together in-person.
“As Lee et al. (2011) found, the MRP system enabled a broad range of meeting types and supported encounters that otherwise would not have happened [6]. The effect of physical embodiment increased feelings of social presence—contrary to the prior skepticism of users [6, 9]. After an initial adjustment period, users were able to interact almost as if they were located together, with no significant downsides. The MRP system was found to support teamwork and collaboration similar to that of a co-located team.”
"Most significantly, we identified that the level of social interaction supported by an MRP is heavily influenced by the usage arrangements. This is particularly in terms of meeting location and scheduling. The practical measures proposed in this research offer strategies for implementing MRP to overcome the issue of conversations in virtual teams being overly task-focused, to the detriment of relational links between team members [40]."
Study courtesy of Dr. Erik Wende, University of Zurich, and Prof. Rainer Alt, University of Leipzig
Toppan, a Japan-based global printing company, and Rekimoto Lab of the University of Tokyo recently introduced their research collaboration on IoA, the Internet of Abilities. IoA is a concept proposed by Professor Jun Rekimoto which focuses on augmenting human abilities beyond the constraints of time and space. Initial experiments on remote telepresence featured Double Robotics' 360 Camera Dolly. The team successfully captured immersive 360 video and projected it onto a remote dome, Jackin Stadium, for sharing the experience with multiple persons.
Guest post & video courtesy of Toppan and Rekimoto Lab of the University of Tokyo
Homebound students at Sycamore Middle School in Cheatham County, Tennessee will never miss a day of class again thanks to one group of fellow students. The group thought of the idea to purchase a Double after a fellow peer was out of school for an entire semester while recovering from surgery. They created and presented a compelling PowerPoint to the school board, and received a Double within three months!
http://wkrn.com/2017/04/07/cheatham-county-class-comes-up-with-plan-to-help-home-bound-students/
Double Robotics was featured on the cover of the March 6th edition of Scholastic News! Fourth grader Grady Loper of Wisconsin has been attending school via Double due to a rare medical condition that keeps him from going to school in person. Check it out!
The latest Apple iPad, boasting a 9.7-inch Retina display and 10-hour battery life, has been tested by our team and works with Double. You will notice it's the same thickness as the first generation iPad Air, but the processor and graphics run a bit faster than the iPad Air 2.
Visit our Support page at www.support.doublerobotics.com to learn more about iPad setup and support.
Leslie Morissette, founder of Grahamtastic Connection, has been honored by CNN as a CNN Hero, for her work in providing free technology for home- or hospital-bound kids. Leslie lends telepresence technology, like Double, to ill kids so they can stay connected to their classrooms. We're honored to work with Leslie and continue providing a way for sick students to attend school.
Watch her story here.
March 13, 2017
To our customers,
On Friday, our CEO, David, sent an email disclosing a non-critical security issue and mitigation. We'd like to take the opportunity to further explain what was discovered and the steps we took following.
Rapid7 identified three potential security vulnerabilities: unauthenticated access to data, static user session management, and open Bluetooth pairing. We patched the first two as outlined below, but do not have plans to change the third. Please see below for full explanations.
1. Unauthenticated access to data: The accessible data included the robot nickname, serial number, latitude, and longitude. No other personally identifiable data was accessible – not username, email, company, password, or anything else. The initial bug report sounded worse than it was because of terms like "device installation_keys", but those are meaningless identifiers used in our system that could be published publicly without risk. Nevertheless, this data leak was patched within seven days upon Rapid7 bringing this to our attention.
2. Static user session management: There was no data leak on this one. This is simply used to keep a user logged in, similar to how users are always logged in to the Twitter and Facebook apps on their phones. As the initial bug report states, this could only be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attack, but we use industry standard TLS encryption to prevent this. We've implemented cycling of these session IDs to meet the high security requirements of our enterprise customers.
Regarding the open Bluetooth pairing question, Double is always connected to the iPad via Bluetooth and the iPad is always on and receiving charge from the base, so the connection cannot be hijacked or intercepted. The Bluetooth connection is also a very short range, so an attacker would need to be within 30-50 feet of Double (i.e. already have access to the facility) and catch it in a moment when both the iPad's battery has died, yet the robot base still has some battery left. There is also no microphone or camera accessible through Double's Bluetooth connection, so the attacker wouldn't have access to any communications. Because of this extremely low risk, we do not see the need for a pairing code.
No calls were compromised and no sensitive customer data was exposed. Double uses end-to-end encryption with WebRTC for low latency, secure video calls.
We take security very seriously and strive to make your telepresence experience with Double the very best. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions.
Thanks,
The Team at Double