A mobile camera robotic system controlled via a head mounted display for telepresence

This paper presents the design and implementation of a telepresence system, where a mobile manipulator robot is utilized to explore a museum at a remote site, sending live video and audio on demand to a user at the local site. The user´s sense of presence is also enhanced through the capability to manipulate objects remotely via the robot gripper. The display system is a television display system that can be worn like a pair of glasses. The head movements of the user are monitored using color tracking, and the displayed images are updated accordingly. This is achieved by interpreting the human head movements and transforming them into control signals for the robot and its mounted color camera. Novel features of the presented system include: utilization of human implicit commands, availability and cost-effectiveness of the system, feeling of presence, and intelligence fusion of the human user with robot´s intelligence. The new version of the telepresence system that is currently under development is also presented