An exploratory study on the impact of varying levels of robot control on presence in robot-mediated communication

Telepresence robots can enhance communication experiences by providing a sense of physical presence, embodiment and may evoke co-presence. In spite of that, telepresence robots have not made it fully to consumer markets. In this paper, we investigate how different levels of controlling a telepresence robot (teleoperation, shared control, and no control) influence presence. To this aim, we conducted a study (N=45) where participants were evenly distributed to one of the robot control conditions. The task involved navigating an unknown room and listening to stories told by a person co-located with the robot. We collected subjective impressions of presence using the temple presence inventory and performed a thematic content analysis on a post-experiment interview. Our results suggest nuances in perceived presence under different levels of robot control after performing a thematic content analysis. Copresence can be experienced during teleoperation and shared control, and teleoperation may evoke negative sentiments if it does not provide enough spatial information during navigation. However, our results did not point to significant differences in spatial or social presence. We consider that these findings encourage further discussions on how presence is perceived in robot-mediated communication.