A Cost-Effective Immersive Telexistence Platform for Generic Telemanipulation Tasks

Robots are expected to become an essential part in tackling the global corona virus pandemic. However, acquiring robotic technology in economically-challenged nations is very difficult for a variety of factors. This work aims at developing a low-cost Telexistence systems that can be used for remote manipulation. We propose a system comprising components on the local site, which comprise a commonly available VR headset, a tracking system and a 3D-printed haptic exoskeleton. The remote site comprises a small robot arm. We discuss the implementation specifics of our approach. We evaluated our system by comparing usability and performance in two tasks while using the VR headset and a monitor. Users were able to complete the two tasks successfully with our system. Moreover, results show superiority of the VR headset, however, the screen also show promising results, and thereby offer a cheaper deployment option.