QB: the two-wheeled office stand-in that launched at $15,000

A round head on a thin neck, for $15,000

Anybots, founded by Trevor Blackwell in 2001, unveiled QB in May 2010. It rolls on two wheels with a self-balancing system, and the battery lasts about eight hours. It has a 5-megapixel camera and LIDAR collision detection, and cruises at about 3.5 miles per hour. Users needed only Wi-Fi and a Firefox plug-in. Designboom described a wide base with a thin telescoping neck topped by a round, bowl-shaped head. The price was $15,000. Blackwell said he wanted a technology that lets remote workers collaborate more fully. The first production run was 100 units.

Shipping from 2011, sales stayed tepid

Shipping began in February 2011. The units added two-way video, which the prototype had lacked, with the operator’s face on a small LCD in the head. Beta testers included Carnegie Mellon faculty, NASA executives and Evernote founder Phil Libin. That August MIT Technology Review described QB sales as “tepid” and said high prices limit applications, comparing it with the $6,000 VGo. In February 2012 Anybots launched AnyLobby, which pairs a QB with a remote worker for 40 hours a week of receptionist duty at about $2,400 a month. The robot cannot sign for packages, so client companies set up workarounds. In June 2012 former Cisco executive David Rogan became CEO. He said “We’re in a rebuild mode here” and said he would look for new business models in markets such as education and medicine. In March 2013 Laptop Mag listed QB at $9,700, and we could not confirm how the price changed. In December 2013 the successor Q(X) was announced, with one or two screens to choose from.

Better than a speakerphone, but you had to turn the whole body

Harry McCracken of Technologizer worked through QB for a week in 2010. Control felt intuitive, and in a meeting it was a clear improvement over a speakerphone. But the neck did not bend, so turning was hard, and he fell over once while docked. Narrow peripheral vision meant swinging the whole robot toward whoever spoke. The neck height could not be changed remotely, so it looked odd to people in the room. His company’s security team blocked it from a confidential meeting. He called $15,000 an expensive mistake if underused and judged it a first-generation technology. Engadget found it fun but “still rather impersonal,” a verdict on a prototype that lacked two-way video. Singularity Hub’s Aaron Saenz called $15,000 reasonable for telepresence but a lot for a novelty. He liked the small screen and wrote: “I don’t think telerobots need big screens.” At shipping, Libin said: “the real value is letting me preserve spontaneous interactions at the office even when I’m thousands of miles away.”

Double’s founders balked at QB’s price

In the ASME article, Double’s co-founders said they were shocked that an Anybots robot cost $15,000 and went on to build an iPad-based robot. Blackwell, who created Anybots, called it “an amazing idea.” The price was in the same range as Beam, which took pre-orders at $16,000 in September 2012 (see the Beam record). QB chose a small screen and mobility over a big display. Reviewers named the neck and the field of view as the weak points, more than the screen.

Does a remote worker need a bigger face, or a neck that turns?

What we haven’t confirmed

• QB’s total sales and how widely AnyLobby was adopted
• How and when the price moved from $15,000 to $9,700
• When QB sales stopped, and Anybots’ current status
• Design intent only as stated by the founder and in coverage; we found no design awards or expert design reviews