DORA: Oculus Rift-based telepresence system

Image: DORA Platform

Telepresence systems of various kinds have existed for a long time, and are used in production, medicine, and everyday life. However, so far such systems are not too perfect, and they have more disadvantages than advantages. Typically, a telepresence robot is a kind of chassis with a tablet / laptop / video system installed. To control such a robot is not very convenient, due to the small number of degrees of freedom of the mobile system of the device.

Now much more advanced robots are appearing, one of which is DORA, a system developed by specialists from the University of Pennsylvania. It uses the Oculus Rift to completely immerse yourself in the control system. Plus, the robot itself is equipped with a large number of degrees of freedom, it is very mobile and almost instantly responds to operator actions.

The goal of the developers, in their own words, is to create such a telepresence system that will allow the operator to forget about where he is at the moment and feel like he is in another place - where the robot itself rides.



Such a system helps to deceive your own brain, which gives the sensation of "leaving the body" (yes, here you can not be afraid of using such a phrase). The control unit is based on Arduino and Intel Edison, while the robot responds almost without delay to commands, including moving forward, backward, as well as moving the moving part along the x, y, z axes.



DORA cameras transmit video stream with a resolution of 976 * 582 with 30 fps. This is not optimal, but do not forget that at present DORA is only a prototype. It is worth noting that with systems of "virtual immersion" the most important factor is the delay. If it is large, there will be no “immersion”. So the communication channel between the robot and the person should be wide enough.


Image: DORA Platform

Now the range of the DORA control system is about 7 kilometers. The distance can be increased if you use Wi-Fi, or 4G. This means an additional delay in signal transmission, however, if the network infrastructure in the place of the robot’s work is sufficiently advanced, the delays will be almost imperceptible.