On the Development of a Robotic System for Telepresence

In a large number of tasks, such as exploration, inspection and surgery, robots are being used to replace or represent humans in remote environments. To investigate the challenges of this emerging research field, we developed a robotic system for telepresence. It is composed of two main modules: a robotic avatar, which is able to represent a human in a remote environment and a user interface that allows a remote operator to task and control the avatar. Through the use of cameras, microphones and other sensors on the avatar, the operator can assess the environment and interact with other humans in the remote area. The robot can execute commands given by the operator and also act autonomously in certain tasks such as navigation and obstacle avoidance. In this paper, we describe the main components of the system in terms of hardware and software and present some proof-of-concept experiments to demonstrate its capabilities.