You Are (Not) The Robot: Variable Perspective Motion Control of a Social Telepresence Robot

COVID-19 has dramatically limited opportunities for in-person human-robot interaction research and shifted focus towards remote technologies such as telepresence robots. Telepresence robots enable rich communication and agency through their physical presence and controllability, but their screen-oriented designs and button-centric controls abstract users away from their own physicality. In this demonstration, we present a telepresence system for remotely controlling a social robot using a smartphone’s motion sensors. Users can select between a first-person perspective from the robot’s internal camera or a third-person perspective showing the robot’s whole body. Users can also record their movements for later playback. This system has applications as an embodied remote communication platform and for crowdsourcing demonstrations of user-crafted robot movements.