Building and Exploiting Maps in a Telepresence Robotic Application

Abstract

Robotic telepresence is a promising tool for enhancing remote communications in a variety of applications. It enables a person to embody a robot and interact within a remote place in a direct and natural way. A particular scenario where robotic telepresence demonstrates its advantages is in elder telecare applications in which a caregiver regularly connects to the robots deployed at the apartments of the patients to check their health. Normally, in these cases, the caregiver may encounter additional problems in guiding the robot because s/he is not familiar with the houses. In this paper we describe a procedure to remotely create and to exploit different types of maps for facilitating the guidance of a telepresenc e robot. Our work has been implemented and successfully tested on the Giraff telepresence robot.