Merely a month ago, telepresence was an interesting thing, but not an immediate concern. Now, it’s on everyone’s mind, and coincidence had it that a new XPRIZE anthology focused on telepresence, AVATARS Inc., was launched yesterday. It’s pure accident that the anthology came out now (the date was set months ago), but there you have it.
My story, “A Mountain to Climb“, concerns telepresence of a single person in multiple robotic bodies, and a space elevator in the process of building.
Hopefully, when a pandemic occurs the next time (unfortunately a question of when rather than if; mitigation is a different question, and that will hopefully be much better), we’ll be prepared to control robotic avatars to teach, take care of the elderly, deliver food and medicine or do surgery.
