Share Your Body with Telepresence Robot

Ever wished you could be in two places at once? Now you can share your body with a telepresence robot created by Dzmitry Tsetserukou of Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan and his team while receiving information about its body to experience another location remotely. "It's like body-to-body telepresence," says Tsetserukou.

By wearing a special belt and using your body like a joystick, the robot can be steered from a distance. Flexible sensors in the belt detect the direction and angle of your movement, allowing the robot to zip forward if you lean forward heavily.

At the same time, the belt can give you a sense of the robot's environment. An on-board laser scanner detects obstacles outside the robot's field of view and conveys their direction by activating vibrating sensors in your belt. For example, when the robot faces a table, the front sensors start to buzz.

Special glasses also allow you to share the robot's view by receiving stereoscopic images from cameras in its eyes.

According to Tsetserukou, existing telepresence robots only allow you to experience what a robot sees and don't tap into the other senses. The team plans to develop their robot to make teleconferencing more immersive and to allow people to play sports remotely.

The robot will be presented at Siggraph Asia, a yearly conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, from December 13-15 in Hong Kong.