To celebrate QANTAS’ reintroduction of their Sydney to San Francisco flight, they decided to host tech talks in the sky, in collaboration with TEDxSydney.

On 17 February, I participated in QANTAS’ Tech Talks in the Sky by doing a demo where I controlled Teleport with my brain, while the plane was flying over the Pacific Ocean from Sydney to San Francisco!  This showcases the use case of someone with a disability being able to control Teleport from home, while being productive and participating in meetings at work.

Travelling internationally with Teleport on commercial flights has really forced our team to work hard at making Teleport as easy as possible to travel around with via plane, so after this trip,  we redesigned a few features to make Teleport more transportable.

Check out my speech below!

After 3 months, we concluded our industry placement experience for students in engineering. During that period, we had visits where we showcased our work. Our first major visit came right before Christmas on 15 December 2015 where we welcomed the Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education, Minister Merlino.

And in the final week of the internship, on 24 February 2016, we welcomed the Governor of Victoria, with each team giving a presentation about the work they completed to welcome and inform our special guests.

With commitments in Melbourne on 27 November, I sent Teleport to Sydney so that I could participate in a panel alongside the Chief Scientist of Israel, Avi Hasson, and the Australian Assistant Innovation Minister, Wyatt Roy, moderated by  Warwick Smith AM for the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

I showed up a bit early and just looked at the audience from the stage while rolling here and there. It was phenomenal.  It felt like I was actually present at the venue. I could see the audience. I could move around on stage.

I could turn to Wyatt when he was talking, raise the head of the robot when the moderator was asking questions, and I could pan the audience when I was answering questions.

AV plugged the speaker system into Teleport directly, so everyone could hear me loudly and clearly.

Afterwards, I walked Teleport around the ball room amongst the 300 people in the audience and did some networking. I could hear the person I spoke with crystal clearly, even in a very crowded room!

It was unreal and I cannot wait until I do another speech via Teleport!

We decided to provide Summer work experience to engineering students from all over Australia.  First thing we needed to figure out was a venue to house them all!  Through giving a speech on 19 September for the City of Melbourne, Melbourne Conversations, I ran into an old friend, the CEO of Engineers Australia, Steve Durkin.  They had just opened a new office in the Melbourne CBD and so he invited us to check it out.

Their office spans 1.5 floors on the 30th and 31st floors.  They decided to give us their venue area as office space.

This is the view of our space from above the atrium.

Ample room for both humans and robots.

All we had to do was look out the window for inspiration.

They had this great tiered seating area.

So fancy and new!

We received 200 applications and accepted the top 20 to participate in our Summer engineering experience program.  A month later, on 23 November, we moved in with our engineering students from all over Australia – Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Wollongong, Hobart and Mallacoota, and got to work!

These are photos of my awesome team on day one.

We made a video to enter in the UAE AI & Robotics for Good Award to showcase how Teleroo enables people with a disability access to work, provides the elderly with another way to socially connect with their family, and students an educational platform on which to learn technical skills.

The UAE AI & Robotics for Good Award is funded by the UAE to recognise advancements in AI and Robotics that are making a positive contribution to the world.  The worldwide winner is awarded $1 million USD, and the UAE winner is awarded AED 1 million.

I submitted my ideas about the future of Teleroo and telepresence robots along with my application to Singularity University (SU), and got in! SU teaches its 80 students from 44 countries how to use exponential technologies to positively impact the lives of a billion people within the next 10 years. The course goes for 10 weeks. Here is a video I took of what it’s like to live a day in the life at Singularity University.