Telepresence Interaction by Touching Live Video Images

This paper presents a telepresence interaction framework based on touchscreen and telepresence-robot technologies. The core of the framework is a new user interface, Touchable live video Image based User Interface, called TIUI. The TIUI allows a remote operator to not just drive the telepresence robot but operate and interact with real objects by touching their live video images on a pad with finger touch gestures. We implemented a telepresence interaction system which is composed of a telepresence robot and tele-interactive objects located in a local space, the TIUI of a pad located in a remote space, and the wireless networks connecting the two spaces. Our system can be a perfect embodiment of a remote operator to do most of daily living tasks, such as opening a door, drawing a curtain, pushing a wheelchair, and other like tasks. The evaluation and demonstration results show the effectiveness and promising applications of our system.