Robot conferencing: physically embodied motions enhance social telepresence

The main feature of robot conferencing is to present the body motions of a conversation partner with a physical embodiment. The purpose of this study is to clarify the effects of this feature on social telepresence, i.e., the sense of resembling face-to-face interaction. We conducted an experiment in which subjects talked with a remote conversation partner through various communication media to compare the robot conferencing with existing media that have no physical embodiment. As a result, we observed that the physical embodiment enhanced social telepresence.

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