Virtual Reality Integrated Multi-Depth-Camera-System for Real-Time Telepresence and Telemanipulation in Caregiving

Abstract

Telepresence and telemanipulation robotics are suitable solutions to relieve humans from direct health risks and repetitive or unhealthy work. Through demographic changes in western countries and the COVID-19 pandemic, this relief is also considered for healthcare workers, especially caregivers, as the demands for them rises. The requirements are intuitively usable telerobotic and telepresence systems for remote assistance, to cut the high physical strain in manual patient transfers and the reduction of contact with infected patients. To ensure this, key technologies like 3D imaging and perception systems are essential. In this work, we present a novel, lightweight telepresence and telemanipulation system, specialized for caregiving. It allows an operator, wearing a virtual reality headset, to immerse into a sensor system captured scene on a distant location in real-time, with low latency of 250 ms and up to 30 fps refresh rate. Extensive measurement shows that 97.1% of the relevant point cloud data is below 1 cm error and 99.5 % is below 1.6 cm, making the system suitable for the application.