Instead, she sent to the queue for a new telepresence robot iPhone

A curious incident occurred in Sydney (Australia) when a telepresence robot named Lucy took the place of a living person in the line at the Apple Store for the new iPhone 6S. It was run by an Atomic 21 employee named Lucy Kelly. It so happened that recently her company acquired six of these robots in order to “play with them” in the office, and just in time for the start of iPhone sales, the girl was unable to break into the store and stand in line as usual. Her boss understood the girl’s condition and suggested sending one of the recently bought robots instead. The technoblog Mashable drew attention to this story .

The robot itself is essentially an iPad mounted on a mobile device very similar to the Segway. Such robots are produced by the California company Double Robotics. It is controlled remotely via a 4G network using a special application or through the Chrome browser using an extension. In the company of Lucy Kelly, the use of telepresence robots is very popular, and even her boss often sends them instead of himself to all kinds of meetings.

For "Lucy" a special tent was equipped for the night, where "she" was recharged and which protected "her" from the rain. At the same time, the face of the hostess of the robot was shown on the screen all the time, which from time to time found the opportunity to chat with people who were also in the queue, and simply answer questions from curious passers-by. Interestingly, none of them showed any discontent or aggression, and everyone found the find very interesting. The line looked something like this:



Atomic CEO Jason Dooris found the marketing find to be very resourceful and noted a growing interest in his company on social networks.

Picture that is usually posted in comments on telepresence robots: