Multisensory wearable interface for immersion and telepresence in robotics

The idea of being present in a remote location has inspired researchers to develop robotic devices that make humans to experience the feeling of telepresence. These devices need of multiple sensory feedback to provide a more realistic telepresence experience. In this work, we develop a wearable interface for immersion and telepresence that provides to human with the capability of both to receive multisensory feedback from vision, touch and audio and to remotely control a robot platform. Multimodal feedback from a remote environment is based on the integration of sensor technologies coupled to the sensory system of the robot platform. Remote control of the robot is achieved by a modularised architecture, which allows to visually explore the remote environment. We validated our work with multiple experiments where participants, located at different venues, were able to successfully control the robot platform while visually exploring, touching and listening a remote environment. In our experiments we used two different robotic platforms: the iCub humanoid robot and the Pioneer LX mobile robot. These experiments show that our wearable interface is comfortable, easy to use and adaptable to different robotic platforms. Furthermore, we observed that our approach allows humans to experience a vivid feeling of being present in a remote environment

Towards a wearable interface for immersive telepresence in robotics

In this paper we present an architecture for the study of telepresence, immersion and human-robot interaction. The architecture is built around a wearable interface that provides the human user with visual, audio and tactile feedback from a remote location. We have chosen to interface the system with the iCub humanoid robot, as it mimics many human sensory modalities, including vision (with gaze control) and tactile feedback, which offers a richly immersive experience for the human user. Our wearable interface allows human participants to observe and explore a remote location, while also being able to communicate verbally with others located in the remote environment. Our approach has been tested from a variety of distances, including university and business premises, and using wired, wireless and Internet based connections, using data compression to maintain the quality of the experience for the user. Initial testing has shown the wearable interface to be a robust system of immersive teleoperation, with a myriad of potential applications, particularly in social networking, gaming and entertainment

Gemini Telepresence Robot System Design: A Low-Cost Solution for Manipulation and Enhanced Perception of Telepresence Robots

Current telepresence robots are costly and only allow the operator to see the environment on a 2D screen and move around on a wheelbase. Thus, these telepresence devices are severely limited because of the high barrier of entry, and the operator is unable to manipulate objects or easily perceive the world in 3D. Therefore, to address these gaps in capabilities, Gemini, an open-source telepresence humanoid robot and interface station, was designed to grant the operator the ability to manipulate objects, expand the human interface by putting the user in the 3D world with the use of a virtual reality (VR) headset, and be low-cost. The simplistic, low-cost, and intuitive controls of Gemini promote early adoption by businesses and medical personnel to grant increased telepresence needs. In addition, this platform can be utilized by robotics enthusiasts and university researchers studying humanoid robotics or human-robot interaction. This paper presents an overview of the Gemini robot’s mechanical, electrical, and programmatic systems. Upon completion of this study, it was found that Gemini was able to grant the ability to manipulate objects, increase user perception with intuitive controls, in addition to costing approximately 30% less than commercial telepresence robots. Furthermore, the paper is concluded with remarks on future iterations of the project

Healthcare Robotics

Robots have the potential to be a game changer in healthcare: improving health and well-being, filling care gaps, supporting care givers, and aiding health care workers. However, before robots are able to be widely deployed, it is crucial that both the research and industrial communities work together to establish a strong evidence-base for healthcare robotics, and surmount likely adoption barriers. This article presents a broad contextualization of robots in healthcare by identifying key stakeholders, care settings, and tasks; reviewing recent advances in healthcare robotics; and outlining major challenges and opportunities to their adoption.Comment: 8 pages, Communications of the ACM, 201

WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence

This dissertation reports on the industrial design of a wearable computational device created to enable better emergency medical intervention for situations where electronic remote assistance is necessary. The design created for this doctoral project, which assists practices by paramedics with mandates for search-and-rescue (SAR) in hazardous environments, contributes to the field of human-mediated teleparamedicine (HMTPM). Ethnographic and industrial design aspects of this research considered the intricate relationships at play in search-and-rescue operations, which lead to the design of the system created for this project known as WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence. Three case studies of different teams were carried out, each focusing on making improvements to the practices of teams of paramedics and search-and-rescue technicians who use combinations of ambulance, airplane, and helicopter transport in specific chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) scenarios. The three paramedicine groups included are the Canadian Air Force 442 Rescue Squadron, Nelson Search and Rescue, and the British Columbia Ambulance Service Infant Transport Team. Data was gathered over a seven-year period through a variety of methods including observation, interviews, examination of documents, and industrial design. The data collected included physiological, social, technical, and ecological information about the rescuers. Actor-network theory guided the research design, data analysis, and design synthesis. All of this leads to the creation of the WEHST system. As identified, the WEHST design created in this dissertation project addresses the difficulty case-study participants found in using their radios in hazardous settings. As the research identified, a means of controlling these radios without depending on hands, voice, or speech would greatly improve communication, as would wearing sensors and other computing resources better linking operators, radios, and environments. WEHST responds to this need. WEHST is an instance of industrial design for a wearable “engine” for human-situated telepresence that includes eight interoperable families of wearable electronic modules and accompanying textiles. These make up a platform technology for modular, scalable and adaptable toolsets for field practice, pedagogy, or research. This document details the considerations that went into the creation of the WEHST design

Supporting active and healthy aging with advanced robotics integrated in smart environment

The technological advances in the robotic and ICT fields represent an effective solution to address specific societal problems to support ageing and independent life. One of the key factors for these technologies is the integration of service robotics for optimising social services and improving quality of life of the elderly population. This chapter aims to underline the barriers of the state of the art, furthermore the authors present their concrete experiences to overcome these barriers gained at the RoboTown Living Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna within past and current projects. They analyse and discuss the results in order to give recommendations based on their experiences. Furthermore, this work highlights the trend of development from stand-alone solutions to cloud computing architecture, describing the future research directions

A review on manipulation skill acquisition through teleoperation-based learning from demonstration

Manipulation skill learning and generalization have gained increasing attention due to the wide applications of robot manipulators and the spurt of robot learning techniques. Especially, the learning from demonstration method has been exploited widely and successfully in the robotic community, and it is regarded as a promising direction to realize the manipulation skill learning and generalization. In addition to the learning techniques, the immersive teleoperation enables the human to operate a remote robot with an intuitive interface and achieve the telepresence. Thus, it is a promising way to transfer manipulation skills from humans to robots by combining the learning methods and the teleoperation, and adapting the learned skills to different tasks in new situations. This review, therefore, aims to provide an overview of immersive teleoperation for skill learning and generalization to deal with complex manipulation tasks. To this end, the key technologies, e.g. manipulation skill learning, multimodal interfacing for teleoperation and telerobotic control, are introduced. Then, an overview is given in terms of the most important applications of immersive teleoperation platform for robot skill learning. Finally, this survey discusses the remaining open challenges and promising research topics