May 9, 2013

SPLENDORA, Texas - When we met Cristian Beasley, 12, he was wearing a black Greenleaf Elementary School T-shirt and rolling down the hallway with his sixth-grade classmates from one room to another. Rolling, literally.

With school boards having to cut budgets, field trips are often on the chopping block. 

But with the VGo Robotic Telepresence Device, the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium is able to offer a field trip of the future.

A South Carolina girl who has not been able to attend school in nearly two years now gets to go to class via a robotic version of herself using VGo. 

Lexie Kinder goes to school from home because of a cardiac pulmonary illness, but wants more than anything to be a normal student.

Using VGo, a remote student can see, hear, talk, interact and move around as if they were in the school.