>
 
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    44 Special vs. 357 Magnum: Which Cartridge Is Right for You?
 Both Canadian and U.S. RVers are reporting harassment because of political tensions
Both Canadian and U.S. RVers are reporting harassment because of political tensions
 TEENS Turn a BARREN Paddock Into a FARM That Feeds Their Community!
TEENS Turn a BARREN Paddock Into a FARM That Feeds Their Community!
 Putting a Price on Life: From 9/11 to the BP Oil Spill and Boston Marathon
Putting a Price on Life: From 9/11 to the BP Oil Spill and Boston Marathon
 Graphene Dream Becomes a Reality as Miracle Material Enters Production for Better Chips, Batteries
Graphene Dream Becomes a Reality as Miracle Material Enters Production for Better Chips, Batteries
 Virtual Fencing May Allow Thousands More Cattle to Be Ranched on Land Rather Than in Barns
Virtual Fencing May Allow Thousands More Cattle to Be Ranched on Land Rather Than in Barns
 Prominent Personalities Sign Letter Seeking Ban On 'Development Of Superintelligence'
Prominent Personalities Sign Letter Seeking Ban On 'Development Of Superintelligence'
 Why 'Mirror Life' Is Causing Some Genetic Scientists To Freak Out
 Why 'Mirror Life' Is Causing Some Genetic Scientists To Freak Out
 Retina e-paper promises screens 'visually indistinguishable from reality'
Retina e-paper promises screens 'visually indistinguishable from reality'
 Scientists baffled as interstellar visitor appears to reverse thrust before vanishing behind the sun
Scientists baffled as interstellar visitor appears to reverse thrust before vanishing behind the sun
 Future of Satellite of Direct to Cellphone
Future of Satellite of Direct to Cellphone
 Amazon goes nuclear with new modular reactor plant
Amazon goes nuclear with new modular reactor plant
 China Is Making 800-Mile EV Batteries. Here's Why America Can't Have Them
China Is Making 800-Mile EV Batteries. Here's Why America Can't Have Them

Now they're getting a bit more hands-on thanks to Japanese company Telexistence, which has begun trials in convenience stores of a robot shelf-stacker that can be controlled by a human via VR.
The Model T (yes, it's named after the classic Ford car) looks like the most mundane Gundam ever. It's basically a robot torso mounted to a waist-high platform, restocking shelves in a store with its two articulating arms and complex hands.
But it doesn't need to be particularly artificially intelligent to do this. The Model T is directly controlled by a human using a stock-standard VR setup from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.
The robot's joints have 22 degrees of freedom, giving it a pretty wide range of movement without requiring much more space than a human would need. Telexistence also says the video connection between the robot and the human operator has a latency of 50 milliseconds, so it should be smooth-controlling.
That said, in the video it does look like pretty slow going, with the robot timidly restocking bottles of drinks at a pace that would get a regular human worker called to the manager's office. Still, maybe the human operator was unfamiliar with the tech and was just being a bit overly cautious.
It's a little hard to see what advantages the robot has over a human employee, but Telexistence says that it could allow staff to work from home – crucial in our current age of social distancing – and recruit workers from basically anywhere.