Story
Telepresence is a service that enables realistic and immersive presence to the user. Though the service is no longer a new terminology, it has not been used widely due to the cost of implementation and mass manufacturing. This paper presents a telepresence system that focuses on building a robotic platform for telepresence. This system is built using open source hardware and software that makes the system affordable and cheap. This system is able to remotely operate over Internet and work in a scenario with audio-video conferencing capabilities. This paper describes a fast and affordable alternate conferencing solution using WebRTC open source project. The WebRTC project enables browser to browser real-time communication. Today several vendors provide telepresence devices, but at a cost that the general public cannot buy. This paper showcases an alternate implementation of telepresence system that comprises of a robotic platform and an audio-video conferencing solution. This system is built using off-the-shelf hardware systems and open source software stacks. However the implementation showcased is meant only for demonstration purpose, the same system with some tweaks can be deployed in actual real-life scenario where the operator can reach the intended destination remotely.
In this era of Global Communication, Real time communication has been proved to be a boon for worldwide communication. Many big Information Technology organizations and Industrial sectors use Video Conferencing for managing various projects linked worldwide. Video conferencing is also quite useful in Educational Institutions as well as Medical sectors where time is a big constraint. The basic scenario in a video conference is that people communicate with each other being stationary i.e. they cannot move and in case when they want to monitor the surroundings or something has to be shown, it is difficult to physically move the camera to that location or vice versa. This system does not utilize the full scope of video conferencing. The solution to this problem lies in telepresence. It can be defined as a set of technical methods which allows a person to feel as if they were present at place other than their true location via telerobotics.Telerobotics is a combination of two fields telepresence and teleoperation. Implementation of telerobotics comprises of a wired or a wireless network which controls the semi-autonomous robot from a distance. This robot which can be controlled remotely via internet using the web browsers can be connected with a phone or a tablet using Bluetooth. It is a drive-by-wire system which enables a user to log into the robot and control it. A user can simultaneously video conference and drive the bot thus increasing the field of view.
Problem Statement
To design a robotic platform with video conferencing capability and which can be remotely operated via Internet The basic scenario for using video conferencing is that people communicate with each other being stationary i.e. they cannot move and in case when they want to monitor the surroundings or something has to be shown, it is difficult to physically move the camera to that location or move that thing to the camera. This system does not utilize the full scope of video conferencing. The caller gets a limited view of the receiver’s surrounding.
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