Augmented robot agent: Enhancing co-presence of the remote participant

Abstract

In this paper, we present a tele-meeting system which uses an augmented robot agent as the representation of the remote participant. In this system, we augment a 3D volume video of the remote participant over the on-site robot. The robot agent in this system represents a remote user with camera, microphone, and mobility. Using this robot agent, the remote user and the local user can show their appearances and interact with tangible interfaces. This robot agent system can be applied to various tele-meeting applications such as tele-marketing and tele-tutoring. For example, we implemented a tele-marketing system to show the feasibility of the suggested system.