This paper considers how the motions of a telepresence robot moving autonomously affect a person immersed in the robot through a head-mounted display. In particular, we explore the preference, comfort, and naturalness of elements of piecewise linear paths compared to the same elements on a smooth path. In a user study, thirty-six subjects watched panoramic videos of three different paths through a simulated museum in virtual reality and responded to questionnaires regarding each path. Preference for a particular path was influenced the most by comfort, forward speed, and characteristics of the turns. Preference was also strongly associated with the users' perceived naturalness, which was primarily determined by the ability to see salient objects, the distance to the walls and objects, as well as the turns. Participants favored the paths that had a one meter per second forward speed and rated the path with the least amount of turns as the most comfortable
We propose augmenting immersive telepresence by adding a virtual body, representing the user's own arm motions, as realized through a head-mounted display and a 360-degree camera. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of having a virtual body in simulated environments; however, research on whether seeing one's own virtual arms increases presence or preference for the user in an immersive telepresence setup is limited. We conducted a study where a host introduced a research lab while participants wore a head-mounted display which allowed them to be telepresent at the host's physical loc…
We propose unwinding the rotations experienced by the user of an immersive telepresence robot to improve comfort and reduce VR sickness of the user. By immersive telepresence we refer to a situation where a 360\textdegree~camera on top of a mobile robot is streaming video and audio into a head-mounted display worn by a remote user possibly far away. Thus, it enables the user to be present at the robot's location, look around by turning the head and communicate with people near the robot. By unwinding the rotations of the camera frame, the user's viewpoint is not changed when the robot rotates.…
Robotic avatars promise immersive teleoperation with human-like manipulation and communication capabilities. We present such an avatar system, based on the key components of immersive 3D visualization and transparent force-feedback telemanipulation. Our avatar robot features an anthropomorphic bimanual arm configuration with dexterous hands. The remote human operator drives the arms and fingers through an exoskeleton-based operator station, which provides force feedback both at the wrist and for each finger. The robot torso is mounted on a holonomic base, providing locomotion capability in typ…
University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas（数学研究中心）
This paper presents some early work and future plans regarding how the autonomous motions of a telepresence robot affect a person embodied in the robot through a head-mounted display. We consider the preferences, comfort, and the perceived naturalness of aspects of piecewise linear paths compared to the same aspects on a smooth path. In a user study, thirty-six subjects (eighteen females) watched panoramic videos of three different paths through a simulated museum in virtual reality and responded to questionnaires regarding each path. We found that comfort had a strong effect on path preferenc…
Unwinding Rotations Reduces VR Sickness in Nonsimulated Immersive Telepresence
Wrocław University of Science and Technology（沃拉夫大学科学与技术学院）；University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Maastricht University（马斯特里赫特大学）；University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
In this paper, we present an implementation of a leaning-based control of a differential drive telepresence robot and a user study in simulation, with the goal of bringing the same functionality to a real telepresence robot. The participants used a balance board to control the robot and viewed the virtual environment through a head-mounted display. The main motivation for using a balance board as the control device stems from Virtual Reality (VR) sickness; even small movements of your own body matching the motions seen on the screen decrease the sensory conflict between vision and vestibular o…
The $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition Advanced Immersive Telepresence Systems
AvaDynamics（阿瓦动力学）；UNIST（蔚山国家科学技术研究院）；Tangible AVATRINA（坦吉布尔阿瓦特里纳）；Pollen（波伦）；Janus（雅努斯）；Inbiodroid（因比奥德罗伊德）；Avatar-Hubo（阿瓦塔-胡博）；SNU（首尔国立大学）；AlterEgo；iCub；Cyberselves（网络自我）；NimbRo；Northeastern（东北大学）；Last Mile（最后一英里）；Dragon Tree Labs（龙树实验室）
本文总结2022年 ANA Avatar XPRIZE 决赛，介绍实时远程化身机器人系统的任务评估、比赛结果、获胜方案与经验。
In this paper, we show that unwinding the rotations of a user immersed in a telepresence robot is preferred and may increase the feeling of presence or "being there". By immersive telepresence, we mean a scenario where a user wearing a head-mounted display embodies a mobile robot equipped with a 360° camera in another location, such that the user can move the robot and communicate with people around it. By unwinding the rotations, the user never perceives rotational motion through the head-mounted display while staying stationary, avoiding sensory mismatch which causes a major part of VR sickn…
This paper considers the problem of enabling the user to modify the path of a telepresence robot. The robot is capable of autonomously navigating to a goal predefined by the user, but the user might still want to modify the path, for example, to go further away from other people, or to go closer to landmarks she wants to see on the way. We propose Human-Influenced Dynamic Window Approach (HI-DWA), a shared control method aimed for telepresence robots based on Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) that allows the user to influence the control input given to the robot. To verify the proposed method, we …
University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Centro de Investigacion en Matematicas (CIMAT)（数学研究中心 (CIMAT)）
In this paper, we analyze how different path aspects affect a user's experience, mainly VR sickness and overall comfort, while immersed in an autonomously moving telepresence robot through a virtual reality headset. In particular, we focus on how the robot turns and the distance it keeps from objects, with the goal of planning suitable trajectories for an autonomously moving immersive telepresence robot in mind; rotational acceleration is known for causing the majority of VR sickness, and distance to objects modulates the optical flow. We ran a within-subjects user study (n = 36, women = 18) i…
Reality Fusion: Robust Real-time Immersive Mobile Robot Teleoperation with Volumetric Visual Data Fusion
accelerator division at the Deutsche Elektronen Synchrotron DESY（德意志电子同步辐射研究中心加速器部门）；Human-Computer Interaction group at Hamburg University（汉堡大学人机交互小组）
Sharing but Not Caring: Similar Outcomes for Shared Control and Switching Control in Telepresence-Robot Navigation
Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu（奥卢大学信息科技与电气工程学院）；Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University（马斯特里赫特大学高级计算科学系）
Mobile telepresence robots (MTRs) have become increasingly popular in the expanding world of remote work, providing new avenues for people to actively participate in activities at a distance. However, humans operating MTRs often have difficulty navigating in densely populated environments due to limited situation awareness and narrow field-of-view, which reduces user acceptance and satisfaction. Shared autonomy in navigation has been studied primarily in static environments or in situations where only one pedestrian interacts with the robot. We present a multimodal shared autonomy approach, le…
Ecole Centrale de Nantes（南特中央理工学院）；IRCCyN（南特计算机与通信科学研究所）
User's perception of product, by essence subjective, is a major topic in marketing and industrial design. Many methods, based on users' tests, are used so as to characterise this perception. We are interested in three main methods: multidimensional scaling, semantic differential method, and preference mapping. These methods are used to built a perceptual space, in order to position the new product, to specify requirements by the study of user's preferences, to evaluate some product attributes, related in particular to style (aesthetic). These early stages of the design are primordial for a goo…
Institute of Computer Science II – Computer Graphics, University of Bonn（波恩大学计算机科学II系——计算机图形学）；Institute of Computer Science VI – Autonomous Intelligent Systems, University of Bonn（波恩大学计算机科学VI系——自主智能系统）
Applications like disaster management and industrial inspection often require experts to enter contaminated places. To circumvent the need for physical presence, it is desirable to generate a fully immersive individual live teleoperation experience. However, standard video-based approaches suffer from a limited degree of immersion and situation awareness due to the restriction to the camera view, which impacts the navigation. In this paper, we present a novel VR-based practical system for immersive robot teleoperation and scene exploration. While being operated through the scene, a robot captu…
Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托尔机器人实验室）；University of the West of England（西英格兰大学）
In this paper, we investigate the utility of head-mounted display (HMD) interfaces for navigation of mobile robots. We focus on the selection of waypoint positions for the robot, whilst maintaining an egocentric view of the robot's environment. Inspired by virtual reality (VR) gaming, we propose a target selection method that uses the 6 degrees-of-freedom tracked controllers of a commercial VR headset. This allows an operator to point to the desired target position, in the vicinity of the robot, which the robot then autonomously navigates towards. A user study (37 participants) was conducted t…
The Impact of VR and 2D Interfaces on Human Feedback in Preference-Based Robot Learning
Humanoid Robots Lab, University of Bonn, Germany（波恩大学人形机器人实验室）；Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden（皇家理工学院机器人、感知与学习部门）；Robotics Institute Germany（德国机器人研究所）；The Lamarr Institute, Bonn, Germany（德国波恩拉玛尔研究所）；Center for Robotics, University of Bonn, Germany（德国波恩机器人中心）
NarraGuide: an LLM-based Narrative Mobile Robot for Remote Place Exploration
Department of Computer Sciences\ of Wisconsin--Madison Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin--Madison；The Robotics Institute\ Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University；Department of Computer Sciences\ of Wisconsin--Madison；The Robotics Institute\ Mellon University
