Design at a distance : tangible telepresence using gesture and robotics
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- How can we help design engineers, who are so often spread around the globe, work as cohesive teams when design is so dependent on in-the-moment, physical actions like sketching, prototyping and gesturing? This question prompted three studies into the design and operation of embodied, robotic telepresence proxies for group interaction. These devices afford a head-and-shoulders view of an individual, distant collaborator, on a physically situated platform that moves in a way that recreates (some of) his or her body language. Study 1 starts by noting that telepresence creates two representations of the distant collaborator in the local workspace—one audiovisual and the other physical—resulting in the proxy-in-proxy problem. We therefore asked crowdsourced participants to compare on-screen and physical behaviors, from which we distinguished four categories of telepresent gesture: intentionally expressive, unanticipated response, focus of attention, and thoughtful, internal states. Study 2 extended this approach to include team interactions, and found that proxy gesture influenced how people interpreted personality traits and group roles of not only distant collaborators, but also their collocated teammates. Study 3 explored the differences between kinetic and idle proxies, as well as implicit and explicit interfaces, during a distributed working session. The ability to physically turn and face particular teammates projected the remote collaborator's focus of attention better, but led others to feel excluded. We also found that implicit control created a tradeoff between lower cognitive effort for the remote user and greater distraction due to incidental motion for the local team. A set of design principles and recommendations (for example, to refine implicit control of proxy gesture by incorporating an activity threshold) helps us understand how to design telepresent communication that is more intuitive for remote collaborators, and more familiar and understandable for their local teammates.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2011 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Sirkin, David Michael |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| Primary advisor | Leifer, Larry J |
| Thesis advisor | Leifer, Larry J |
| Thesis advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Thesis advisor | Nass, Clifford Ivar |
| Advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Advisor | Nass, Clifford Ivar |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | David Michael Sirkin. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2011. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2011 by David Michael Sirkin
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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