Can you feel me?: How embodiment levels of telepresence systems affect presence

Abstract

Since a telepresence system is a system intended to be used in interpersonal communication, conveying the presence of a remote sender is an important issue. Robotic telepresence system is a newer variant of a telepresence system. Even though robot characteristics of having physical embodiment could be effective on building presence of itself, this could yield distortion of presence of a remote sender in telepresence. Thus, in order to determine effective methods of increasing sender presence during telecommunication, we perform a two within-participants experiment, considering the effects of the embodiment levels, by comparing a weakly-embodied telepresence system, a tablet and a strongly-embodied telepresence system, a telepresence robot (number of participants, N = 48). In this study, the participants engage in conversations with a remote sender either through a tablet or a telepresence robot. The results show that participants have a lesser sense of sender presence for a strongly-embodied telepresence system compared to the weakly-embodied telepresence system. On the other hand, participants perceived more presence of a telepresence system toward a strongly-embodied telepresence system than a weakly-embodied telepresence system. The implications of these findings are the weakly-embodied telepresence systems would be effectively used in settings where emotional connection is a priority. In addition, incorporating sensory modalities should be considered for neutralizing the negative effects of strong embodiment on presence.