A Study of Enhanced Robot Autonomy in Telepresence

Abstract

Many telepresence robots have been developed, but most offer little more than a webcam on wheels, with the user being in control of every function of the robot. In order to enhance the users ability to remotely communicate, navigate and feel present in a remote environment, we argue that a higher degree of autonomy is required. In this paper a telepresence system is presented that assists the user in three core ways: semi-autonomous navigation control, semi- autonomous people tracking and improved situational awareness. The value of enhanced autonomy in telepresence systems is demonstrated by experiments carried out with real users, both with a webcam on wheels and with our proposed telepresence system.