Geography is longer an obstacle.
All these by virtue of telepresence technology.
The team at NTU has been fostering cross-disciplinary research in social robotics technologies for the past four years, namely the EDGAR project.The school has recently unveiled two new social and telepresence robots.
This project was led by Associate Professor Gerald Seet. “Telepresence provides an additional dimension to mobility. The user may project his or her physical presence at one or more locations simultaneously” he said.
Both robots has its own personality, mood and emotions however, each has its distinguishable traits and are different in their functions.
The first, named Nadine, is a humanoid robot that resemble closely to that of a human being. It has the ability to recall names and past conversations it had with people.
Being powered by intelligent software similar to that of Siri, it can also be made virtual and appear on a TV or computer screen.
Another robot, named EDGAR, is a telepresence robot equipped with a rear-projection screen for its face and two highly articulated arms. It is wired to project the gestures of its human user when complemented with a special webcam.
A notable feature would be that it is not limited by geographic boundaries and can be controlled from anywhere in the world to mimic a person’s expressions and upper body movements.
With these newly developed telepresence robots, it can be a leverage for commercialisation, used as an inexpensive low-cost virtual social companion or for education purposes. The perks of such technology is limitless and is something that the world can thrive on.