Telepresence for surgical assistance and training using eXtended reality during and after pandemic periods

Existing challenges in surgical education (See one, do one, teach one) as well as the COVID-19 pandemic make it necessary to develop new ways for surgical training. Therefore, this work describes the implementation of a scalable remote solution called “TeleSTAR” using immersive, interactive and augmented reality elements which enhances...

Implications on Learning Outcomes and Eye-strain of using Telepresence Robots as a new Distance Learning Medium

Distance learning brings all sorts of advantages. The ability to follow lectures at home can save people transportation costs and time. Teaching through videoconferencing software such as Zoom is one of the methods to learn remotely. To explore new and better teaching methods, the possibility of using a telepresence robot is investigated. To...

The effects of situated visualized telepresence on task performance in gesture-based teleoperation

This paper introduces a method for gesture-based teleoperation where the human operator can virtually exist within the remote environment using mixed reality. The proposed method visually mixes the operator’s body with their perception of the remote environment, so that the operator is virtually present at the remote site. The idea is the that...

A remote and immersive setup for pandemic-safe surgical education

Existing challenges in surgical education (See one, do one, teach one) as well as the Covid-19 pandemic make it necessary to develop new ways for surgical training. This is also crucial for the dissemination of new technological developments. As today's live transmissions of surgeries to remote locations always come with high information loss...

The Virtual Rubber Hand Illusion: Moving in the Right Direction?

The Rubber Hand Illusion is an illusion in which<br/>visual cues of stimulation on a fake hand are combined with<br/>synchronous tactile cues on a participant’s hand, which can<br/>induce a sense of bodily ownership of the fake hand. This<br/>technique does not facilitate synchronous movement of the<br/>hands, and asynchronous stimulation or...

Collision avoidance with haptic feedback for telepresence: An intelligent data management approach

The use of telepresence becomes an alternative in scenarios such as deep sea maneuvers, inspection and maintenance in hazardous environments or aerial surveillance tasks, amongst some other robotic tasks. In some of these cases, human deployment might be dangerous, expensive and even not possible yet. Because of the wide variety and increasing...

Changing behavior during teleoperation by tricking the brain?: Exploring a practical application of body illusions

Teleoperation is widely used in human-hostile or otherwise inaccessible environments. However, using teleoperation to perform a task is more difficult than performing the task directly. A main factor for this is limited telepresence due to the absence or distortion of natural sensory feedback. An interesting possibility to increase telepresence...

Designing an elderly community platform for a telepresence device

This master thesis describes the design of an elderly community platform for YoooM, a touchscreen telepresence device that is currently being put on the market. The objective of YoooM is to allow users the best possible contact over distance. To enable this, the system is equipped with two large screens and two cameras that give a life-sized...

Stereoscopic Remote Vision System: A Delay Minimizing Approach for Telepresence

This thesis presents a remote vision system designed to be used for telepresence applications. Telepresence is essentially being able to assert one's presence at a remote location. Being able to see and talk to people in another corner of the world is one method of telepresence we have come to know as video conferencing. As technologies evolve,...

Meet a new way of museum visits: Development of an enjoying online exhibition experience for a scale model exhibition using a web-controlled robot

This master thesis started with the assignment to redesign a telepresence software in order to make it suitable for an online exhibition visit. This assignment was formulated by the art collective Cybercity Ruhr, who planned two exhibitions for the second half of 2010. During these exhibitions the teenagers’ view on the future of cities is shown...

Fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton robots

This thesis is the first to provide the fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton design. The fundamental theory as well as technology necessary to analyze and develop ergonomic wearable robots interacting with humans is established and validated by experiments and prototypes. The fundamentals are (1) a new theoretical framework for analyzing...