Patent ID: 6914622

Claim:
A teleconferencing robot, for enabling a remote conferee to project a sense of presence into a group meeting, the teleconferencing robot comprising: a base comprising an upper stage and a lower stage and wherein the lower and upper stages are rotatable relative to one another about a substantially vertical axis; one and only one video monitor is secured to the upper stage and the upper stage is rotatably mounted to the lower stage, said video monitor receiving and displaying a life-sized image of the remote conferee's face; a video camera movably mounted on the base; control means mounted on the base for moving the video monitor secured to the upper stage and the video camera in response to an input control signal; a sound location system for generating a speaker location signal in response to which the control means can automatically swivel said video monitor with said image of the remote conferee's face to look at another conferee speaking in an automatic mode; and wherein said upper stage to which said video monitor and said video camera are secured is moved in response to one of said input control signal to enable the remote conferee to project a sense of presence into the group meeting in a manual mode, and the speaker location signal generated by said sound location system in the automatic mode.