Telepresence and Apparent Agency in Human–Robot Interaction

Abstract

Telepresence robots are often different in that they typically inherit their agency from the human tele-operators who drive them. Through qualitative field observations and quantitative findings from a series of lab experiments, the author compiles a body of work that points toward the importance of apparent agency and teasing out the factors that influence it. Using a variable-based approach to studying communication technologies, the author looked for design and framing variables that would improve how loudly or quietly people spoke, how safely people would move around, and how much of a teammate the remote coworkers could become. These field studies and experiments represent one slice of the ongoing research in human–robot interaction, human–computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work that is moving toward gaining a deeper understanding of robotic telepresence.