BELLEVUE, Wash. – In a sixth-floor executive suite here, Deepak Savadatti’s robot has its own office with a view.
Savadatti himself may be sitting in front of a computer hundreds of miles away, at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He may be dialing in from a smartphone on the road, or at the beach. No matter where he is, his face pops up on the robot’s screen, his voice issues forth from a speaker, and he can even roll around the office to look out the window.
“My kids are surprised that this is working out so well,” Savadatti told GeekWire via robot. “It’s as real as it’s going to get. The very fact that I can move in and out gives me a lot of freedom to be able to have a real workday.”
It’s close to the ultimate in telecommuting: Savadatti’s telepresence robot lets him do his job as the chief operating officer of Bellevue-based BlueDot, the “innovation factory” founded by veteran tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, while he’s sitting in a home office hundreds of miles away.
