Research on Supporting an Operator’s Control for OriHime as a Telepresence Robot

ABSTRACT

Recent years, classes, conferences and group works in companies and universities have been done as online, which means people don’t have chances to hold them in person because of preventing infections of COVID-19. In regard to these ways of using an online meeting, there is a problem that people who attend online meetings have a strong tendency to have a cognitive load due to having burden behaviors such as discussing and operating PC, smartphone and tablet devices at the same time in comparison with in-person meeting. Particularly, when it comes to using telepresence robots, it is needed for operators to be required to pay much attention. In this study, for diminishing operators’ cognitive load, a supporting system which operating telepresence robots OriHime by using the movement information of operators’ head is proposed. Moreover, we identify that there is a chance to diminish operators’ cognitive load through obtaining information of face position by using telepresence robot, although the effect of the proposed system is set to be revealed by conducting an experiment. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.