A multi-robot system for unconfined video-conferencing

Abstract

Telepresence or tele-immersion technologies allow people to attend a shared meeting without being physically present in the same location. Commercial telepresence solutions available in the market today have significant drawbacks - they are very expensive, and confine people to the area covered by stationary cameras. In this paper, we present a mobile tele-immersion platform that addresses these issues by using robots with embedded cameras. In our system, the users can move around freely because robots autonomously adjust their locations. We provide a geometric definition of what it means to get a good view of the user, and present control algorithms to maintain a good view. The algorithms are validated both in simulation and in real experiments.