El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / This research paper proposes a low-cost telepresence technological model focused on primary education. Its aim is to give students a new resource/communication channel for classes, which would be used when they cannot attend school due to health problems that do not affect their learning process. This solution seeks students to not be passive listeners during a session, but that they interact with their classmates and teachers during class. To validate the model, a telepresence platform based on WebRTC was developed. It was tested in three schools in different geographical areas belonging to socioeconomic sector C, collecting data from the students who tested the tool, as well as from classmates, teachers, and parents. / Revisión por pares

Telepresence is defined as the sensation of being present at a remote robot task site while physically present at a local control station. This concept has received substantial attention in the recent past as a result of hypothesized benefits of "presence" experiences on human task performance with teleoperation systems. Human factors research, however, has made little progress in establishing a relationship between the concept of telepresence and teleoperator performance. This has been attributed to the multidimensional nature of telepresence, the lack of appropriate studies to elucidate this relationship, and the lack of a valid and reliable, objective measure of telepresence. Subjective measures (e.g., questionnaires, rating scales) are most commonly used to measure telepresence. Objective measures have been proposed, including behavioral responses to stimuli presented in virtual worlds (e.g. ducking virtual objects). Other research has suggested use of physiological measures, such as cardiovascular responses to indicate the extent of telepresence experiences in teleoperation tasks. The objective of the present study was to assess the utility of using measures of attention allocation and situation awareness (SA) to objectively describe telepresence. Attention and SA have been identified as cognitive constructs potentially underlying telepresence experiences. Participants in this study performed a virtual mine neutralization task involving remote control of a simulated robotic rover and integrated tools to locate, uncover, and dispose of mines. Subjects simultaneously completed two secondary tasks that required them to monitor for "low battery" signals associated with operation of the vehicle and controls. Subjects were divided into three groups of eight according to task difficulty, which was manipulated by varying the number, and spacing, of mines in the task environment. Performance was measured as average time to neutralize four mines. Telepresence was assessed using a "Presence" questionnaire. Situation awareness was measured using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique. Attention was measured as a ratio of the number of ?low battery" signal detections to the total number of signals presented through the secondary task displays. Analysis of variance results revealed level of difficulty to significantly affect performance time and telepresence. Regression analysis revealed level of difficulty, immersive tendencies, and attention to explain significant portions of the variance in telepresence.

This dissertation uses Heidegger’s critique of technology and its essence in an attempt to understand how Virtual Reality technology can change how we interact with the world and each other. The history of VR devices is unpacked to understand the motivation behind VR’s uses and development. Merleau-Ponty’s theories about embodied experiences are also used to understand how VR has an increased capacity to generate a sense of telepresence in the virtual environment for the user. Cases are investigated that specifically deals with how VR has influenced human interactions and rituals and made them more convenient to the users. The first cases focus on religion and how it changes when it is taken online. Specific focus is given to the Church of Fools online church and D.J. Soto’s VR church. The difference between how an online church operates is compared to the VR Church and how embodiment in the VE is experienced in each. This dissertation also explores cases where a user enters a ‘cross-dimensional’ relationship with the virtual. Two cases of people marrying virtual characters are examined. In these cases, the user entered a relationship with a character that was constructed by someone else. The other case examined, is that of Sgt.Hale (username) who created and then married a virtual character in a VE that he designed and based on a real-world location. In each of the relevant cases, how technology has influenced and, in a sense, encouraged them, is explored and unpacked. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Visual Arts / MA / Unrestricted

This thesis investigates the viability of a new communication medium for telepresence, namely a robotic head with a 3D face mask. In order to investigate this, a program was developed for an existing social robot, enabling the robot to be used as a device reflecting the facial movements of the operator. A study is performed with the operator located in front of a computer with a web camera, connected to speak through the robot to two interlocutors located in a room with the robot. This setup is then compared to a regular video call. The results from this study show that the robot improves the presence of the operator in the room, along with providing enhanced simulated gaze direction and eye contact with the interlocutors. It is concluded that using a robotic head with a 3D face mask is a viable option for a communication medium for telepresence. / Denna uppsats utforskar gångbarheten för ett nytt kommunikationsmedium för telenärvaro, nämligen ett robothuvud med en 3D-ansiktsmask. För att undersöka detta har ett program utvecklats för en existerande social robot, som möjliggör att roboten kan återspegla operatörens ansiktsrörelser. En studie utförs med en operatör placerad framför en dator med en webbkamera, där operatören kopplas genom roboten för att prata med två samtalspartner som är i samma rum som roboten. Detta arrangemang jämförs sedan med ett vanligt videosamtal. Resultaten från studie visar att roboten förbättrar operatörensnärvaro i rummet, och dessutom ger förbättrad simulerad blickriktning och ögonkontakt med samtalspartnerna. Slutligen fastställs att ett robothuvud med en 3D-ansiktsmask är ett gångbart kommunikationsmedium för telenärvaro.

Current video conferencing tools lack a sense of presence. Telepresence can improve the current video conferencing by providing feeling of presence at a different location from remote location. Most recent telepresence systems are built with the devices that are not accessible and uncomfortable for the daily meeting purpose. This work proposes a framework for embodied telepresence system that suits a daily meeting case the best. Based on our new telepresence framework, a new system architecture and design requirements are constructed. The system architecture shows how the telepresence system needs to be structured, and a design requirement helps to understand the needs of the system. With this framework we were able to implement a user friendly and accessible telepresence system. Our telepresence system enables users to control the telepresence robot with smartphone controller. The controller has four features: (1) Smartphone orientation control, (2) Position save and playback, (3) Local smart light bulb control, and (4) visual cue. At the end, our work evaluates the developed telepresence system by measuring the performances of given tasks to the participants. The evaluation shows that our system provides a sense of presence to both remote and local users. However, the proposed telepresence framework and system requires farther improvements to provide better usability. / Master of Science / During the pandemic, video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet showed the advantages of having meetings and working remotely. However, these tools do not provide a sense of presence and the necessary level of control of what can be seen from a remote user's point of view. Therefore, researchers investigated and developed various tools that can give remote users a sense of presence at a location where a face-to-face meeting is taking place. We call this a telepresence tool. Our systematic review of the current telepresence tool results that most of the telepresence tools use devices that are not familiar and hard to access for general users. Additionally, they do not consider the local users feeling about remote user's presence at the face-to-face meeting (local site). Therefore, in this paper, we propose a general guideline or framework to help build a telepresence tool that overcomes the current telepresence tools' problems. Our telepresence tool, developed based on our proposed framework, uses a smartphone to control the telepresence robot that represents a remote user at the local site. A remote user can control the local site light bulb, save the telepresence robot's position and place it back, and show the user is away or present at the meeting. The evaluation of our telepresence system shows that our system provides a sense of presence to both remote and local users

AASS, or the Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems, is a research environment at Örebro University. This report will touch the development of a robot intended for elderly care in a project called "Project Sputnik". The robot is essentially a manually controlled communication robot that is driven by a pilot from a computer. The robot’s purpose is to provide the option of virtual visits between elders and healthcare professionals or family and friends. The requirements for the robot are numerous and the project itself is far too extensive for one student to complete in a 15 credit course. Therefore, the project was limited to the physical design only. During the pilot-study a large amount of research was done to gain a better understanding of the touched subjects and to prepare for the future development of the project. The project followed the design methodology to gradually develop a conceptual sketch. The concept should form a basis that AASS can continue the development on, and is therefore deliberately crude not to limit AASS in the continued work of Project Sputnik. / AASS, eller Centrum för tillämpade autonoma sensorsystem är en forskningsmiljö på Örebro Universitet. Den här rapporten kommer röra utvecklandet av en robot ämnad åt äldreomsorgen i ett projekt vid namn "Project Sputnik". Roboten är huvudsakligen en kommunikationsrobot som styrs manuellt av en pilot från en hemdator och ska ge en upplevelse av virtuell närvaro. Kraven för roboten är många och projektet i sig är för omfattande för en student att utföra i en kurs på 15 högskolepoäng. Därför begränsades projektet till enbart den fysiska designen. Under förstudien gjordes en stor mängd research för att få en bättre förståelse för berörda områden och förbereda inför kommande processer i projektet. Projektet följde designmetodiken för att gradvis bygga fram en konceptskiss. Konceptskissen ska utgöra en grund som AASS kan utveckla, och är därför medvetet grov för att inte begränsa AASS i det fortsatta arbetet i Project Sputnik.

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This study’s main focus is people’s experience of telepresence (or presence for short) —where the roles of technology are misperceived by media users in various ways, such as the illusion of “being there” in a mediated environment. Although over 2000 articles have examined telepresence and nearly all of research studies about telepresence have been conducted in labs by controlling and measuring the effects of different factors, with few examining it from the perspective of people’s experiences in their daily lives. Following Lombard and Sun’s (2014) (my previous study with Lombard) study of people’s presence experience outside the lab, this study used the combined results of a survey and an interview (n = 36) to explore participants’ lived experiences of presence. Participants offered basic information about them and their experience of presence in the survey; and talked about any experience of presence in their lives and specifically talk more details about their recent experience during the interviews. This study found when, where, with what kind of media, and in what situation people are more likely to have the experience of presence, and explored what elements could contribute to people’s experiences of different types of presence. The results of this study noted aftereffects of presence experiences, which means the effects presence has after people’s mediated experiences are over. These results were new findings to the study of presence outside the labs. Moreover, this study also demonstrated the value of Lombard and Sun’s (2014) survey and found two questions in the survey that could be improved. / Media Studies & Production

In this thesis we examine 360 degree curvilinear displays and their potential for the display of 3D information. We present two systems: a spherical display prototype and a cylindrical display. Our spherical display prototype used the lack of set user position and natural visibility constraints of a spherical display to create a 3D display system that treated the sphere as a volumetric display through the use of 360 degree motion parallax and stereoscopy. We evaluated these properties by examining how our use of stereoscopy and 360 degree motion parallax, might aid in the preservation of basic body orientation cues and in pose estimation tasks in a telepresence application with our final cylindrical display. Results suggest the combined presence of 360 degree motion parallax and stereoscopic cues within our cylindrical display significantly improved the accuracy with which participants were able to assess gaze and hand pointing cues, and to instruct others on 3D body poses. The inclusion of 360 degree motion parallax and stereoscopic cues also led to significant increases in the sense of social presence and telepresence reported by participants. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-29 14:14:33.822

This dissertation is a study of the early career of the American artist Joan Jonas that spans the years 1970-1984. At the turn of the 1970s, Jonas was one of the first artists to pick up a video camera. Exploring “live” video’s unique capacity to mediate the present moment, Jonas actively integrated the technology into her live pieces, which are some of the earliest examples of what was then first called “performance art.” Performance art has often been aligned with presence. In contrast, I argue that what at stake in the proliferation of live artworks by Jonas and others that merged performance and video was not a reserve of unmediated experience, but a presence that was newly technologized: telepresence. As Jonas investigated the novel ability to perform at a distance enabled by electronic media, her work led somewhere surprising: to telegraphy, telepathy, and the earliest telephones—“tele”-technologies that appear long obsolete (or completely fantastical). Evoking optical telegraphs, spirit mediums, speaking trumpets, and science fictional prostheses, Jonas’s early oeuvre reactivates the historical contexts and unrealized potentials surrounding these dead media. In so doing, she illuminates enduring formations of the body, subjectivity, and teletechnology underlying not only the twinned emergence of performance and video art in the 1970s, but also telepresence as a seemingly very contemporary (and increasingly pervasive) category of experience.