Design and development of two generations of semi-autonomous social telepresence robots

Abstract

Our research focuses on how a telepresence robot operator, the people with the robot, and the robot itself collaborate so that the operator reaches his/her intended destination. Our research requires higher levels of autonomous navigation so that the robot can, for example, go to a specified destination and follow a person. However, commercial telepresence robots are primarily teleoperated, and only a few provide assisted navigation around obstacles. We present the evolution of our overall design for augmenting two VGo Communications' VGo robots, Hugo and Margo. We detail the requirements and design constraints encountered while developing our telepresence robot platforms.