Telepresence across the Ocean

We describe the development and deployment of a system for long-distance remote observation of robotic operations. The system we have developed is targeted to exploration, multi-participant interaction, and tele-learning. In particular, we used this system with a robot deployed in an underwater environment in order to produce interactive web-casts of scientific material. The system used a combination of robotic and networking technologies and was deployed and evaluated in a context where students in a classroom were able to observe and participate to a limited degree in the operation of a distant robot being used for environmental assessment.