Telepresence Systems With Automatic Preservation of User Head Height, Local Rotation, and Remote Translation

Mutually-Immersive Mobile Telepresence uses a teleoperated robotic surrogate to visit remote locations as a substitute for physical travel. Our goal is to recreate to the greatest extent practical, both for the user and the people at the remote location, the sensory experience relevant for face-to-face interactions of the user actually being in the remote location. To enhance immersion for the user, our second-generation system can automatically preserve the head height of the user at the remote location. In order to eliminate loss of immersion due to teleoperation delays, in our third generation system we are eliminating one class of teleoperated mechanical motion by allowing rotations to take place at the user’s location instead of at the remote location. A key component of this is a low-profile synchronous drive base. We also provide a novel natural interface for controlling translational motion at the remote location.