Deformation of the panoramic sphere into an ellipsoid to induce self-motion in telepresence users

Abstract

Mobile telepresence robots allow users to feel present and explore remote environments using technology. Traditionally, these systems are implemented using a camera onboard a mobile robot that can be controlled. Although high-immersion technologies, such as 360-degree cameras, can increase situational awareness and presence, they also introduce significant challenges. Additional processing and bandwidth requirements often result in latencies of up to seconds. The current delay with a 360-degree camera streaming over the internet makes real-time control of these systems difficult. Working with high-latency systems requires some form of assistance to the users. This study presents a novel way to utilize optical flow to create an illusion of self-motion to the user during the latency period between user sending motion commands to the robot and seeing the actual motion through the 360-camera stream. We find no significant benefit of using the self-motion illusion to performance or accuracy of controlling a telepresence robot with a latency of 500 ms, as measured by the task completion time and collisions into objects. Some evidence is shown that the method might increase virtual reality (VR) sickness, as measured by the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ). We conclude that further adjustments are necessary in order to render the method viable.