Iterative design of a semi-autonomous social telepresence robot research platform: a chronology

Our research focuses on howa telepresence robot operator, the people with the robot, and the robot itself collaborate so that the operator reaches his/her intended destination. Our research requires higher levels of autonomous navigation so that the robot can, for example, go to a specified destination and follow a person. However, commercial This research has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation (IIS-0546309, IIS-1111125). K.M.Tsui (B) ·A.Norton ·D. J.Brooks ·E.McCann·M.S.Medvedev· J. Allspaw· J. M. Dalphond · M. Lunderville· H. A. Yanco Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Norton e-mail: [email protected] D. J. Brooks e-mail: [email protected] E. McCann e-mail: [email protected] M. S. Medvedev e-mail: [email protected] J. Allspaw e-mail: [email protected] J. M. Dalphond e-mail: [email protected] M. Lunderville e-mail: [email protected] H. A. Yanco e-mail: [email protected] S. Suksawat Department of Computer Science, Worcester State University, 486 Chandler Street, Worcester, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] telepresence robots are primarily teleoperated, and only a fewprovide assisted navigation around obstacles.Our system must include sensors and processing to enable these capabilities. We present the chronology of our iterative design for augmenting two VGo Communications’ VGo robots, Hugo and Margo, over a period of 3 years. We detail the requirements and design constraints encountered while developing our telepresence robot platforms.