Meet Jazz, Europe’s Telepresent Answer to the Anybot

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Courtney Boyd Myers

Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups gr (show all) Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups grow internationally. Previously, she was the Features Editor and East Coast Editor of TNW covering New York City startups and digital innovation. She loves magnets + reading on a Kindle. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter @CBM and Google +.

Gostai, Europe’s long time maker of robotic software has decided to take a stab at developing its own telepresence robots. Meet Jazz, a line of robots that includes “Jazz Connect” technology for telepresence in the office or anywhere in the world, “Jazz Icon” for companies who want to promote their image and “Jazz Security” for surveillance and security.

Measuring just 1-meter tall, Jazz robots are mobile, fitted with a camera and connected to the Internet via WiFi. Users can connect to the robot via any web browser to take part in a meeting or check in on employees in an interactive way by talking though Jazz’s embedded loudspeaker while controlling the robot’s moves via an intuitive interface.

Jazz looks and acts a lot like on of my favorite Silicon Valley robots, the Anybot QB, which made our list of Robots that Rocked in 2010 and recently started shipping out to customers. Anybot and Jazz are both part of an ongoing trend into telepresence robotics. Commuting may soon become a thing of the past.

Robotics telepresence will completely change long-distance communication. Gostai decided to make the Jazz line of robots user-friendly and elegant without compromising on quality, proving that robotics can be a pleasure and efficient. -Gostai founder and CEO Jean-Christophe Baillie

Jazz Connect and Icon are available now, for sale starting at €7900. The security bot runs a bit higher, retailing at €8400, which is still quite a bit cheaper than Anybot’s US $15,000 price tag.

Watch a video of Jazz in action here.