Design and development of two generations of semi-autonomous social telepresence robots

Author

Tsui, K.M. ; Norton, Alan ; Brooks, Daniel J. ; McCann, E. ; Medvedev, Mikhail S. ; Yanco, Holly A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Univ. of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

22-23 April 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Our research focuses on how a telepresence robot operator, the people with the robot, and the robot itself collaborate so that the operator reaches his/her intended destination. Our research requires higher levels of autonomous navigation so that the robot can, for example, go to a specified destination and follow a person. However, commercial telepresence robots are primarily teleoperated, and only a few provide assisted navigation around obstacles. We present the evolution of our overall design for augmenting two VGo Communications´ VGo robots, Hugo and Margo. We detail the requirements and design constraints encountered while developing our telepresence robot platforms.

Keywords

collision avoidance; human-robot interaction; mobile robots; telerobotics; Hugo robot; Margo robot; VGo Communications; VGo robots; autonomous navigation; design constraints; semiautonomous social telepresence robot design; semiautonomous social telepresence robot development; telepresence robot operator; Bandwidth; Batteries; Cameras; Drives; Navigation; Robots; Universal Serial Bus;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Woburn, MA

ISSN

2325-0526

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-6223-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TePRA.2013.6556360

Filename

6556360