Virtour: Telepresence System for Remotely Operated Building Tours

In this paper we describe Virtour, a public facing system for teleoperated building tours. It aims to facilitate lab and departmental tours by creating a system wherein prospective students can remotely operate a wheeled robot around the Building-Wide Intelligence lab and the rest of the computer science building. Virtour’s server architecture builds on the existing Building-Wide Intelligence autonomous robot platform, which is capable of autonomous localization, planning, and navigation. The web client interface is built using modern web technologies to allow users to control our robots from any internet device (e.g., cellphone, tablet, computer). Virtour provides an interface where users can view what the robot sees, as well as control the robot’s rotation and camera angle in real time. Navigation is provided using a map where users can select their desired destination and have the robot autonomously navigate there. This approach eliminates the risk of human navigation error by abstracting away movement commands. As a result we can provide users an immersive telepresence system, which is safe to use, and provides a service to our lab and department by allowing anyone to digitally visit and experience the areas first-hand. In fulfillment of the Turing Scholars Honors Thesis requirement Advisor: Peter Stone