Multimedia at CHI: Telepresence at Work for Remote Conference Participation

Susanne Boll recounts her experience as a telepresence robot attending this year’s ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), illustrating the fusion of the state of the art in robotics, long-distance interaction, and shared remote-audio-visual experiences. As a researcher in human computer interaction, yet with an international team facing restricted travel owing to the newly imposed US travel ban, she opted for remote participation at CHI 2017. Furthermore, as a member of the multimedia community, she wanted to explore first-hand how multimedia is at work in the field of telepresence.