Telepresence With Arms

According to prnewswire.com , the Telepresence robotic industry raked in over $1.4 billion in 2016, and are anticipated to reach $8 billion by 2023. The one thing most telepresence robots have in common is no arms. The ones that do have arms have a claw used by a joystick. Over 55% of communication is done nonverbaly. Arm and hand gestures are used to reinforce spoken communication. And those gestures are typically done subconsciously, so joysticks are impractically. My colleagues and I in the Kent State University Advanced Telerobotic Research Laboratory have built a telepresence robot that mimics your arm gestures by visually capturing your real arm gestures while you generate them during natural conversation.