Integrating a perceptual information infrastructure with robotic avatars: a framework for tele-existence

Describes an infrastructural framework to support interactivity among entities that are not residing in the same physical environment. In such an environment, mobile robots supported by a perceptual information infrastructure gather information and communicate with people in a distant place instead of the users. This is one of the possible and promising applications of robots based on the current technologies of robotics, multimedia and computer networks. The paper describes the overall architecture and main system components. We discuss experimental studies where underlying concepts and algorithms are evaluated