exploring use cases for telepresence robots
Telepresence robots can be thought of as embodied video conferencing on wheels. Companies producing these robots imagine them being used in a wide variety of situations (e.g., ad-hoc conversations at the office, inspections and troubleshooting at factories, and patient rounds at medical facilities). In July and August 2010, we examined office-related use cases in a series of studies using two prototype robots (Anybots' QB and VGo Communications' VGo). In this paper, we present two studies: conference room meetings ( n =6) and moving hallway conversations ( n =24). We discuss who might benefit from using telepresence robots, in what scenarios, and the features that telepresence robots must incorporate for use in ad-hoc interactions.
video conferencing teleoperation remote presence