The Record has an article describing how Ivan Bowman is spending his days working from home, but still being able to attend meetings, exchanges notes with other developers, and hang out in the kitchen or lounge over coffee and snacks with his co-workers.

He is able to do this 1,350 kilometers from the Waterloo office by way of IvanAnywhere, a robot Bowman uses to interact with his colleagues from his home office.

The robot itself looks a little creepy at first, more resembling a coat rack mounted on a cardboard box, with speakers, a camera and a touch-screen computer. But apparently looks are only skin-deep, and Bowman’s colleagues ignore IvanAnywhere’s looks and work with him like any other robot co-worker. How’s that for an avatar!