The Dark Side of Telepresence Robots

We've all seen that commercial where a robot with a laptop head running Skype lets a sick boy stuck at home go to classes. It's a great idea and it's already working, but there are some ways this could be bad.

First off, the kid can easily cheat during tests by looking up answers on his other computers at home during tests and regular class time. Second, forget about bullies stealing this kid's lunch money, they can just steal the entire device and sell that on the black market for a several thousands of dollars. Less intelligent bullies can still do other things like put panties on the robot's head or hang it upside down and risk damaging the expensive equipment. The kid at home isn't experiencing the physical pain of these actions, but he's still getting all of the emotional anguish.

Perhaps equipping the telepresence robot with some sort of shoulder mounted laser weapon or rubber bullet Gatling gun could help this problem. In fact, if you reinforce the robot well enough, that might be a better way to protect other students from school shootings. The bubble boy has the ultimate power and that's not a risk because he's not gonna shoot his classmates from home and even if he does it's non-lethal bean bag rounds. You save money by not having to hire security guards and save the police's time by not requiring a presence from them. It's almost too perfect.