[Dprglist] telepresence today

[David Anderson]

Karim,

I posted this link earlier to the Homebrew robotics group of a fellow 
doing a nifty telepresence experiment using small robots with smart 
phones, if you didn't see it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/hbrobotics/Vx1lDsWQOe8

which includes some nifty video demos.  As to your larger question, we 
built a remote piloted vehicle at smu some years ago and I drove it 
around the building quite a bit and learned some things.  Here's a link:

http://www.geology.smu.edu/dpa-www/robo/camcar/

The original car had a fixed mount camera but we found we needed to be 
able to look around, for example to cross the street, so a two-axis 
servo mount was added and we found that, in addition to looking around, 
the robot could now nod it's head for yes and shake back and forth for 
no.  So we could pull up to a closed door or elevator and wait for a 
human to come along, and through "yes" and "no" interactions get them to 
open the door for us.   People seemed quite willing to do so.

The mount was setup so it could rotate a little more than 360 degrees 
and that turned out to be really valuable when the robot or it's antenna 
got stuck on something.   Also to see the wheels to determine what they 
might be running up against.

We also found that we could push objects around and interact with the 
environment.  Here's a video of the robot worrying a trashcan away from 
the wall and pushing it into the stairwell and down the stairs:

http://www.geology.smu.edu/dpa-www/robo/camcar/camcar_can.mpg

A couple a times the robot itself fell down a flight of stairs, and it 
was completely confusing as to what was happening as it tumbled end over 
end.  So in the above video you can see the camera looking down at the 
wheels to be sure it was far enough from the edge.

It occurred to us at the time that this might be a real boon for someone 
who was bedridden to interact with the world, perhaps a sick or 
handicapped child.    The comm link was only one way at the time but 
that would not be a problem with today's technology.

My only real worry at the time was that the last thing we would see 
would be a big hand coming in and covering up the video link...

cheers,

dpa





On 04/25/2020 11:42 AM, Karim Virani via DPRGlist wrote:
> Does anyone here have hands-on experience with telepresence robots? I 
> know a lot of us have experimented with the concept. I've done things 
> like setup a remote pan-tilt webcam at my desk at work with remote 
> desktop and a webcam feed so people could see me controlling my pc and 
> I could direct the webcam on their end so I could look around in the 
> office. They found it novel but spooky. But it didn't have the ability 
> to move around. My team has played around with this on mobile robots, 
> but only in a trivial way. Though we are working on truly remote 
> control of our current robot.
>
> Here is a compilation of some currently available options:
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-telepresence-robots
>
> I'm not just interested in the technical aspects. What about the 
> social norms? How do you set expectations for co-works for simple 
> things like helping the robot through doorways or to different floors 
> of an office? Especially when it is not inhabited.
>
> Clearly this industry is going to boom. Thoughts?
>
> Karim
>
>
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