'Improving Social Teleoperation' seminar by Dr. Stela H. Seo (UCLIC seminar)

Abstract

Teleoperation offers a promising solution to overcome our physical limitations. It allows us to coexist in multiple locations and gives us enhanced perception. However, teleoperation and telepresence robots have not yet achieved widespread adoption. The difficulty of operating these systems is a major reason, which can be categorized into three challenges: awareness, capability, and expression.

Awareness is a well-known hurdle; operators must understand remote situations, process information cognitively, and make swift decisions. Capability is another clear challenge; if a robot cannot climb stairs, our ability to explore spaces is limited. Consequently, people only use these robots when they are capable of specific tasks. Finally, expression is often restricted. Robots’ limited physical capabilities constrain our ability to convey various social cues.

In this talk, I will detail these challenges and explain how I have addressed some of them in my research. Furthermore, I will discuss how we can improve social teleoperation to empower people through robots.

Full bio

Stela H. Seo is a program-specific associate professor in Informatics at Kyoto University, Japan. He received his PhD in Human-Robot Interaction from the University of Manitoba, Canada in 2021. His primary research objective is to empower people in social teleoperation and social human-robot interaction. Specifically, his work investigates how robotic technologies can enhance human capabilities, when two or more people interact via teleoperated robots as intermediaries. To this end, he leverages teleoperation systems, investigating how to improve a remote teleoperator’s performance and situation awareness by providing them with meaningful and easily interpretable information. Beyond social teleoperation, he maintains broad research interests, including teleoperation interface design, multi-robot operations, social human-robot interaction, and the development of interactive content. Through these endeavors, he aims to advance the integration of robots as effective social agents in collaborative and communicative contexts.