Uber Business Model for Teleportation

The Star Trek transporter brought the concept of teleportation to everyone's living room. According to an informal survey carried out by physisist Lawrence M. Krauss on the Arizona State University campus, "the number of people in the United States who would not recognize the phrase 'Beam me up, Scotty' is roughly comparable to the number of people who have never heard of ketchup."

The concept of teleportation was modernized in a 2009 American science fiction film, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis. The film's plot centers on a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase remote controlled humanoid robots through which they interact with society. These fit, attractive, remotely controlled robots ultimately assume their life roles, enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Below is an example ad for the "new you".

To BE-THERE-NOW without having to actually travel is obviously a good thing. Imagine attending a meeting in a distant place without the associated travel time and expense. Incredibly, teleportation is now possible and I will describe a way that you can instantly teleport yourself to anywhere in the world. 

Teleporting is like a mobile version of video teleconferencing that involves the "tele-traveler" (you) and a "surrogate". The surrogate is a remote robot that assumes the identity of the traveler. The surrogate is delivered to the teleportation destination by a local contractor and is controlled by the traveler. The traveler remotely commands the surrogate to "walk", "sit", "listen" and "speak". The obvious questions are: where to get the surrogate robot, how to control it, and how to deliver the surrogate to the teleportation destination.

Getting the surrogate turns out to be rather easy. A Silicon Valley company called DoubleRototics (with which I am not affiliated other than owning one of their robots) manufactures exactly what we need. The robot stands, Segway-style, balanced on two wheels and its long neck supports an iPad that displays the traveler's face, as well as a microphone and a speaker.

Controlling the surrogate is also simple. The traveler uses a mobile app to walk the surrogate and to make it sit. The traveler speaks and listens through a face that is displayed on the surrogate's iPad screen. The traveler's mobile device displays live video of what the surrogate's iPad face sees.

Getting the surrogate to the travel destination is interesting because it involves a new "teleportation business model". The first part of the business model is to deploy a Teleport mobile app that is almost identical to the Uber app used by Uber drivers and their customers. The second part is to lease surrogates to Uber drivers around the world.

A traveler wishing to BE-THERE-NOW, simply uses the Teleport app to identify a contracting Uber driver nearest to the teleportation destination. The Uber driver drops off the surrogate and is eventually contacted again to pick it up. The process is the same as the standard Uber pickup, drop-off model but in reverse, drop-off first, pickup later.

Surrogates are not limited to far-away places. I can imagine sending mine to the office, to school and even to my brother's wedding.

Write to Peter Redford at [email protected]

View other articles by Peter Redford

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Peter Redford is a veteran Silicon Valley technology CEO and Xerox PARC alumnus. Redford’s patents are licensed by most of the world’s top computer, consumer-electronics, and media companies.

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