English: "You can do this anywhere your laptop is, so it saves on travel," said John Nguyen, an Intel IT Labs researcher working on a remote telepresence robot pilot project that uses Suitable Technologies' Beam robot.

See more: Robots Roam Inside Intel Telepresence robots allow cost-effective collaboration for a global workforce.

Robotic automation has long been used in Intel factories, but actual 5-foot tall robots are now roaming the halls of the company's offices, popping into cubicles for quick chats and rolling into meetings and collaboration spaces.

When a telepresence robot wheels into a meeting, the screen displays streaming video from the user's webcam. The robot's video camera, microphone and speakers send a live stream from the room back to the person in another location. The wheeled robots can be driven remotely from a laptop, freeing them to move around the room or extend face-to-face collaboration to other locations.