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