The Impact of Telepresence Robot Types on the Perceived Presence of a Remote Sender

Abstract

As telepresence robots are developed for interpersonal communication between a remote sender and a receiver, conveying the presence of a remote sender to a receiver is an important issue. A telepresence robot could build its own presence unlike other media since it enables visual, auditory, and tactile communication having an in-space physical embodiment. Thus, in order to find effective ways to deliver the presence of a remote sender, we executed a 2 (Telepresence robot types: social medium vs. pure medium) within-participants experiment (N=30). In this study, two types of telepresence robots, a telepresence robot with high presence, a social medium, and that with low presence, a pure medium, provides the information of the conversation status to a receiver. The results show that participants felt more presence of a remote sender when interacting with a telepresence robot with high presence than a robot with low presence. Implications for design of a telepresence robot to increase the presence of a remote sender are discussed.