Telepresence and user-initiated control

To date, telepresence; defined as being virtually present at a remote, real location; is a research subject primarily of interest to robotics and aerospace industries. The pi-lot system and the study presented here aim to investigate whether telepresence can be achieved with an affordable and easy to use system. In our approach a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with a camera represents the remote self at the local site. The PDA is mounted to a pan and tilt unit which can be con-trolled from the remote location by simply pressing keys on the keyboard of a PC. In a pilot user study we can show, that (a) even this simple setup can be used as a telep-resence system, (b) the control of the field of view within the remote environment is important, and (c) some social presence properties are positively influenced by the user-initiated control