Ever looked at your schedule and thought to yourself, wondering just how the heck are you going to manage being in two different places at the same time? Well, you can now do so in a sense, thanks to a body sharing telepresence robot that was developed by Dzmitry Tsetserukou of Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan, where his team will be able to receive information concerning the robot’s body to experience another location remotely. According to Tsetserukou, “It’s like body-to-body telepresence.”
You will have to wear a special belt and make use of your body in the same manner of a joystick, where it will enable you to steer the robot from a distance. The clever incorporation of flexible sensors located in the belt will be able to detect the direction as well as angle of your movement, letting this robot move in front if you lean forward heavily. The belt also has another function – to let you experience a sense in the environment, where the on-board laser scanner will be able to detect obstacles located outside the robot’s field of view. Donning a pair of special glasses, you can then share the robot’s view thanks to its eyes (cameras).