Meet the Australian-designed, Chinese-made video conferencing robot challenging Zoom, Google Meet in the workplace

Growing up, Marita Cheng has been fascinated with technology, particularly robots. So when the Australian engineer with Hong Kong roots turned 24 in 2013, she founded Aubot, a robotics company that aims to create products that help people with their daily lives.

Today, Aubot’s flagship product is the Teleport, a teleconferencing robot that roams around the office, allowing remote workers to talk to their on-site team members.

With a 10-inch screen attached to a height-adjustable pole and three wheels, the Teleport can be controlled using a laptop keyboard and offers a more natural interactive experience than typical meeting software like Zoom, Cheng said.

“With Zoom, you have one perspective … because [people] usually adjust the camera so that [others] just see [them] in a good way,” said Cheng in a recent interview with the Post. “Whereas with a Teleport, it’s more real in that it’s not as curated.”

Since it shipped in 2016, the Teleport – priced at A$4,980 (US$3,250) – has also been used for conducting remote tours in museums, as well as enabling children with long-term illnesses to continue their learning from home or the hospital, according to Aubot.

As a private company, Aubot does not publish its sales or user statistics.

While the Teleport is primarily sold in Australia, Cheng said the robot is produced in Shenzhen, China’s southern tech hub known for its established manufacturing industry.

Raised in Cairns, Australia by her migrant mother, Cheng comes from a large family in Hong Kong. Visiting home frequently as a child, she became curious about manufacturing in China and yearned for a first-hand experience.

“There’s a lot of deep skills in manufacturing [in Shenzhen], which made it easy to work with suppliers to prototype quickly and solve engineering challenges together,” Cheng said, adding that the Teleport’s final assembly and quality control are still conducted in Melbourne, Australia.

Cheng, who was named one of Forbes’ World’s Top 50 Women in Tech in 2018, said she has dreamed of making robots ever since she read a story book about a boy that has nanobots in his body to keep him energetic.

“My mum would ask me to do the dishes or clean the floor, and while I did that, I’d think it would be so good if there was a robot doing this instead,” Cheng said while wearing a pair of robot-shaped earrings.

Cheng said the tech industry is still male-dominated, but she is committed to breaking gender barriers.

Back in 2008, when she found out there were only five women in her class of more than 50 students studying mechatronics engineering and computer science at the University of Melbourne, she co-founded Robogals, an organisation that encourages girls to study engineering and related fields.

Today, Robogals is an international student organisation with presence in 10 countries.

While Cheng said there are still people who look down on her as a female entrepreneur, she tries to focus on things she can control.

“I’m just trying really hard to hit our goals and achieve our impact,” Cheng said. “I really like [the idea of] being too good that they can’t ignore you.”