Abstract

Remote collaborators working together on physical objects have difficulty building a shared understanding of what each person is talking about. Conventional video chat systems are insufficient for many situations because they present a single view of the object in a flattened image. To understand how this limited perspective affects collaboration, we designed the Remote Manipulator (ReMa), which can reproduce orientation manipulations on a proxy object at a remote site. We conducted two studies with ReMa, with two main findings. First, a shared perspective is more effective and preferred compared to the opposing perspective offered by conventional video chat systems. Second, the physical proxy and video chat complement one another in a combined system: people used the physical proxy to understand objects, and used video chat to perform gestures and confirm remote actions.

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Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the role of the movement trajectory and velocity enabled by our tele-robotic system (ReMa) for remote collaboration on physical tasks. Our system reproduces changes in object orientation and position at a remote location using a humanoid robotic arm. However, even minor kinematics differences between robot and human arm can result in awkward or exaggerated robot movements. As a result, user communication with the robotic system can become less efficient, less fluent and more time intensive.

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