A case study of an automatic volume control interface for a telepresence system

The study of the telepresence robot as a tool for telecommunication from a remote location is attracting a considerable amount of attention. However, the problem arises that a telepresence robot system does not allow the volume of the user's utterance to be adjusted precisely, because it does not consider varying conditions in the sound environment, such as noise. In addition, when talking with several people in remote location, the user would like to be able to change the speaker volume freely according to the situation. In a previous study, a telepresence robot was proposed that has a function that automatically regulates the volume of the user's utterance. However, the manner in which the user exploits this function in a practical situation needs to be investigated. We propose a telepresence conversation robot system called “TeleCoBot.” TeleCoBot includes an operator's user interface, through which the volume of the user's utterance can be automatically regulated according to the distance between the robot and the conversation partner and the noise level in the robot's environment. We conducted a case study, in which the participants played a game using TeleCoBot's interface. The results of the study reveal the manner in which the participants used TeleCoBot and the additional factors that the system requires.