Studying virtual worlds as medium for telepresence robots

This paper presents a study on the effects of using virtual worlds as medium for interaction with telepresence robots. The Prototype for Assisted Communication PAC4 is also introduced. This system connects virtual worlds with real robots, allowing virtual world users to access the robot capabilities in a telepresence scenario. A user experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of PAC4 on the feeling of social presence experienced by virtual world users.