Interface design and usability analysis for a robotic telepresence platform

With the rise in popularity of robot-mediated teleconference (telepresence) systems, there is an increased demand for user interfaces that simplify control of the systems´ mobility. This is especially true if the display/camera is to be controlled by users while remotely collaborating with another person. In this work, we compare the efficacy of a conventional keyboard and a non-contact, gesture-based, Leap interface in controlling the display/camera of a 7-DoF (degrees of freedom) telepresence platform for remote collaboration. Twenty subjects participated in our usability study where performance, ease of use, and workload were compared between the interfaces. While Leap allowed smoother and more continuous control of the platform, our results indicate that the keyboard provided superior performance in terms of task completion time, ease of use, and workload. We discuss the implications of novel interface designs for telepresence applications.