Design and development of an indoor avatar robot

The use of robot as a substitute to human biological body in various type of task such as space exploration, inspection, meetings, and surveillance activities are becoming popular nowadays. Robotic avatar, or avatar robot, is a concept in which a robot replaces the real human. This paper reports the design and development of an avatar robot with telepresence function, which we called AvaRobo. The AvaRobo was derived primarily from our previously developed autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) type surveillance robot platform, named JagaBot™. The JagaBot™ was enriched with specialized two-way remote communication and autonomous navigation capabilities for AvaRobo application. Remote users can manipulate and control AvaRobo and use it to inspect and assess the remote environment and interact with other humans at the remote area. The AvaRobo can move autonomously via line tracking technique or manually by executing the commands given by the remote operator.