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

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.