Maintaining the Presence of Remote Speakers on Telepresence Robots by Visual Morphing to Reduce Loneliness

Abstract

Telepresence robots can provide the sense that a remote person is physically present. However, this sense disappears suddenly once a call ends. Therefore, the speaker may feel loneliness. This study explores “tele-vestige” in which speakers can perceive the weak social presence of a remote speaker after a call ended. To provide this tele-vestige, the remote speaker's face is morphed into a telepresence robot's face after the call ends. We conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of this morphing technique on loneliness.