Telepresence robots are used in various forms in various use-cases that helps to avoid physical human presence at the scene of action. In this work, we focus on a telepresence robot that can be used to attend a meeting remotely with a group of people. Unlike a one-to-one meeting, participants in a group meeting can be located at a different part of the room, especially in an informal setup. As a result, all of them may not be at the viewing angle of the robot, a.k.a. the remote participant. In such a case, to provide a better meeting experience, the robot should localize the speaker and bring the speaker at the center of the viewing angle. Though sound source localization can easily be done using a microphone-array, bringing the speaker or set of speakers at the viewing angle is not a trivial task. First of all, the robot should react only to a human voice, but not to the random noises. Secondly, if there are multiple speakers, to whom the robot should face or should it rotate continuously with every new speaker? Lastly, most robotic platforms are resource-constrained and to achieve a real-time response, i.e., avoiding network delay, all the algorithms should be implemented within the robot itself. This article presents a study and implementation of an attention shifting scheme in a telepresence meeting scenario which best suits the needs and expectations of the collocated and remote attendees. We define a policy to decide when a robot should rotate and how much based on real-time speaker localization. Using user satisfaction study, we show the efficacy and usability of our system in the meeting scenario. Moreover, our system can be easily adapted to other scenarios where multiple people are located.

中文翻译：

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我也可以参加会议！迈向类人远程呈现机器人代表您参加会议

远程呈现机器人在各种用例中以各种形式使用，有助于避免有人在行动现场出现。在这项工作中，我们专注于远程呈现机器人，该机器人可用于与一群人远程参加会议。与一对一会议不同，小组会议的参与者可以位于房间的不同位置，尤其是在非正式场合。结果，所有这些都可能不在机器人（即远程参与者）的视角下。在这种情况下，为了提供更好的会议体验，机器人应该定位演讲者并将演讲者带到视角的中心。尽管使用麦克风阵列可以轻松完成声源定位，但将扬声器或一组扬声器置于视角并非易事。首先，机器人应该只对人声做出反应，而不是对随机噪音做出反应。其次，如果有多个扬声器，机器人应该面向谁，还是应该随着每个新扬声器不断旋转？最后，大多数机器人平台都是资源受限的，为了实现实时响应，即避免网络延迟，所有算法都应该在机器人本身内实现。本文介绍了远程呈现会议场景中注意力转移方案的研究和实施，该方案最适合并置和远程与会者的需求和期望。我们定义了一个策略来决定机器人何时应该旋转以及基于实时说话者定位旋转多少。使用用户满意度研究，我们展示了我们系统在会议场景中的有效性和可用性。而且，