Robot stand-in mimics movements in VR

The robotic system, called VRoxy, allows a remote user in a small space, like an office, to collaborate via VR with teammates in a much larger space. VRoxy represents the latest in remote, robotic embodiment.

Donning a VR headset, a user has access to two view modes: Live mode shows an immersive image of the collaborative space in real time for interactions with local collaborators, while navigational mode displays rendered pathways of the room, allowing remote users to "teleport" to where they'd like to go. This navigation mode allows for quicker, smoother mobility for the remote user and limits motion sickness.

The system's automatic nature lets remote teammates focus solely on collaboration rather than on manually steering the robot, researchers said.

"The great benefit of virtual reality is we can leverage all kinds of locomotion techniques that people use in virtual reality games, like instantly moving from one position to another," said Mose Sakashita, a doctoral student in the field of information science at Cornell. "This functionality enables remote users to physically occupy a very limited amount of space but collaborate with teammates in a much larger remote environment."

Sakashita is the lead author of "VRoxy: Wide-Area Collaboration From an Office Using a VR-Driven Robotic Proxy," to be presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), held Oct. 29 through Nov. 1.

VRoxy's automatic, real-time responsiveness is key for both remote and local teammates, researchers said. With a robot proxy like VRoxy, a remote teammate confined to a small office can interact in a group activity held in a much larger space, like in a design collaboration scenario.

For teammates, the VRoxy robot automatically mimics the user's body position and other vital nonverbal cues that are otherwise lost with telepresence robots and on Zoom. For instance, VRoxy's monitor -- which displays a rendering of the user's face -- will tilt accordingly depending on the user's focus.

It is equipped with a 360-degree camera, a monitor that displays facial expressions captured by the user's VR headset, a robotic pointer finger and omnidirectional wheels.

In future work, Sakashita wants to supercharge VRoxy with robotic arms that would allow remote users to interact with physical objects in the live space via the robot proxy.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Nakajima Foundation.