Semi-Automatic Control of Telepresence Robots

Abstract: Companies all over the world started to produce and sell telepresence robots in the last decade. Users of these robots have to plan their way to avoid collisions and control the speed of the robot to move it to destination point. This interface is familiar to many people who play computer games but it causes difficulties for the older generation and disabled people. We present here a novel interface to control telepresence robots where the operator only specifies the destination point on the video frame and the robot moves there automatically and avoids collisions. Users of the robots learn how to perform tasks 7-28% faster and make 17-49% fewer mistakes. The approach can be easily applied for any commercial telepresence robot and for development of telepresence robots for disabled people.