A study on the effectiveness of using telepresence and multiple cameras in remote physical therapy

The present research investigates the effectiveness of using a telepresence system compared to a video conferencing system and the effectiveness of using two cameras compared to one camera for remote physical therapy. The telepresence system that was used is Telegie, which allows users to see a place in 3D through a VR headset. This telepresence system provides additional spatial information to its users. Similarly, using two cameras with a video conferencing system allows users to see a place from multiple angles and provides additional spatial information. These two approaches of providing users additional spatial information were examined and compared in the context of remote physical therapy. In this dissertation, a telepresence system will be introduced and the design criteria (real-time, multi-user, simplicity, behavioral realism, spatial realism, openness) that led to the current implementation of the telepresence system will be explained citing existing telepresence systems. These will be followed by the implementation details of the telepresence system, the design of the study, and finally, the analysis of the study. In the study, the participants included 11 physical therapists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and 76 patients from Stanford University. The study was 2x2 factorial design: video conferencing compared to telepresence, and 1-camera compared to 2-camera. Each patient was assigned to one of the four conditions (e.g., 2-camera video conferencing). Results showed that none of the eight hypotheses predicting the main effects on many outcome measures for both telepresence and using two cameras were supported via t-tests. In additional analyses, with the individual differences both the therapist and patient controlled in a linear mixed model as random effects, using two cameras showed a marginally significant positive effect on physical therapy evaluations from the therapists. The interaction between using telepresence and using two cameras showed a marginally significant negative effect on the evaluations from therapists. Other findings include the positive effects of using telepresence when the video clarity level is controlled and observation of the patients' spatial ability as a strong predictor of therapists' evaluations on sessions. The findings of this dissertation indicate that video fidelity of remote communication systems matters and therefore suggest telepresence systems should provide sufficient video clarity matching the purposes of remote communication, which was remote physical therapy in this case. At the same time the findings, especially with the analyses with video clarity level controlled, suggest that with improved video clarity, telepresence may provide a better user experience compared to video conferencing. While it was not hypothesized as a primary mechanism, the spatial ability of patients was found as a strong predictor of physical therapy session evaluation, which should be further examined in the future

Keywords: Communication.
Advisor: Bailenson Jeremy
Harari Gabriella
Reeves Byron
Wetzstein Gordon