As a result of me appearing via Teleport on stage at AICC’s event (access to AICC’s event post here), I was nominated for the Asia Society Asian Change Agent Award. So I flew to NYC on 27 October 2016 to attend the Awards Ceremony at the United Nations. Other awardees included Zhang Yimou, Soo-Man Lee, and Sanduk Ruit.

Zhang Yimou is a renowned and respected Chinese film director who directed Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
Soo-Man Lee is the founder of S.M. Entertainment, one of Korea’s most reputable entertainment companies.
Sanduk Ruit brought the gift of sight to those whom need it most.

This was the 3rd year for the awards. In previous years, Malala, Jack Ma, and Manny Pacquiao have been acknowledged.

The awards were presented by Charles Rockefeller, Princess Beatrice, Kevin Rudd, and other notable people.

SBS’s Small Business Secrets came in and shot footage in the 2Mar office. This aired on 23 October. We were so pleased to share our work and office with Australia.

The footage can be viewed on Facebook or BizSecrets!

On 12 October, 2Mar participated in Innovation in the Wild (IITW) at The Cluster. For this event, IITW partnered with the ITS World Congress to source its attendees.

We met with employees from Ericsson, Mercedes Benz, Cisco, Toyota, Bosch and Volvo. Lots of people expressed interest in having a Teleport in their office. We had a great time and can’t wait for the next one.

It’s a unique event where there are only 12 companies exhibiting, and groups of 3-4 people rotate every 5 minutes to meet each company. It’s great because it’s a very immersive experience. For two hours, you’re refining your pitch every 5 minutes. And unlike a trade show where you have busy periods and quiet periods, IITW is just full-on the entire time, which makes it really fun.

We had a great looking booth with a tall robot next to a big screen showing Teleport in action. It looked awesome.  Above is a photo of Teleport while we were setting up – it’s small and at its lowest height so that it’s easy to transport around.  🙂

Thank you Optus, for naming us Future Makers!  We took part in a 4-month program where we were mentored in social entrepreneurship and scaling our impact.  We had three 3-day sessions in Sydney, and one 3-day session in Melbourne during the 4-month period.

At the conclusion of the program, 50% of the 12 participants received funds to execute their projects.  2Mar’s funds will be used to continue our work, making robots to help people in their everyday lives, and to fund robots for kids with cancer in hospital so that they may remotely attend school.  Thank you Optus!

• Getting specialists from Melbourne to Teleport into rural and regional hospitals in order to save time and money.
• Teleport in metropolitan general practices for specialists in the larger local hospitals to consult with the GPs
• Having robots all around the hospital for loved ones, family and friends to Teleport in, to visit patients in hospital – saving time, reducing stress and increasing visitation hours
• Patients may also be discharged early and monitored at home from the hospital remotely via Teleport, saving the hospital money.

I was named a Myer Innovation Fellow to continue my work with telepresence robots for people with a disability. Two other people were also named as a MIF, they are Anna Rose and Andrew Robinson.

The Fellowship will enable me to dedicate even more resources towards bringing helpful robots to the world.

Thank you Myer and the Myer Foundation! More information available at this link.

Teleport appeared in The Age on 31 January 2016, exploring Melbourne, as an example of technology that will be everywhere in the next few years.  Exploring cities, museums and art galleries are all adventures Teleport is looking forward to taking.
Read the full article here!

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.