Richard Garriott's Mother Shakes Her "Robootie"
Props to Kevin Fishburne for forwarding this Wall Street Journal article to me and bringing it to my attention. It’s a touching — and, frankly, amusing — chronicle of how Richard Garriott’s mother was able to attend her son’s wedding in France from the comfort of her own home.
When Richard Garriott de Cayeux threw a costume party the night before his wedding in Paris, his 82-year-old mother dressed up as an Indian princess and attended as a robot.
Helen Mary Garriott wasn’t strong enough to make the long trip from her home in Las Vegas. So Mr. Garriott de Cayeux went looking for alternatives. The one he hit upon was a portable robot about the size of a canister vacuum cleaner with a telescoping neck, binocular-shaped eyes and a screen for a forehead.
The staff at his Austin, Texas, computer games company Portalarium Inc. tested it out, then shipped it off to the wedding. And, voila!, his mother was in Paris — virtually.
And as if that weren’t awesome enough, the story gets better:
The next day, for the wedding itself, Ms. Garriott wore a blue dress and bluestone necklace, and held her cat. Her wheeled proxy cruised among the guests, allowing her to make conversation and watch the proceedings. Staff people helped the robot up and down the stairs of the French chateau where the ceremony took place.
Attendees autographed Ms. Garriott’s cardboard outfit. When her robot rolled to the middle of the dance floor, she was encircled by kids and family, amid disco lights and flashing lasers. She turned her robootie back and forth, the easiest move to maneuver by tapping arrows on her keyboard. Forward and backward movement, meanwhile, was a bit harder to coordinate because of the lag time half way around the globe, Mr. Garriott de Cayeux says.
“My mother was kind of being R2D2 in the center of the dance floor,” Mr. Garriott de Cayeux says, laughing. “It was my most special, fun moment of the whole time of her participating as a robot.”
The WSJ paired the article with a small gallery of images, showing a few classical depictions of robots in media, and ending with a handful of shots apparently sent in by Lord British himself. I’ve grabbed screenshots of these and embedded them below:
[nggallery id=77]
I’m assuming that’s Owen Garriott accompanying the robot in the first picture.
Good job Richard. As a game designer, this is how I’d want to live out the latter half of my days. When I read this story my first happiness was that his mother was still alive. Good to hear about Owen too.
The article on the WSJ seems unfinished. It just trails off in the middle of a paragraph.
And soon, thanks to Virtual Reality, you will be able to BECOME Richard Garriot’s mom.
@Infinitron The WSJ might have a paywall where only subscribers get the full articles. Old media’s still trying to figure all that stuff out since the paper versions are dying.