Students design virtual telepresence robot

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 15

With an advent of technology, researchers are coming up with various ideas to reduce human intervention in the areas of work where the risk to life is very high.

Earlier, there was a concept of ‘Virtual Reality (VR)’ which had garnered a lot of attention of gamers and enhanced their business in related applications. But these days, the concept of ‘Virtual Tele-presence’ is slowly paving its way into the mainstream technological applications which gives a person an opportunity to roam around in the real world by not physically being there.

Taking inspiration from this technology, a team of two students, Lakhwinder Singh and Amit Kumar of the final year of BTech, of the department of ECE, CT Institute of Engineering, Management and Technology (CTIEMT) , under the supervision of HoD Dr Harjit Pal Singh and Noorinder Kaur, have designed and tested a working prototype of ‘Battery operated virtual telepresence robot’.

Lakhwinder Singh said: “The robot has been designed using Raspberry-Pi platform and uses a digital camera to record the scenes from the remote area where it is placed, and return a live feed to the user on his mobile phone. This robotic system is equipped with the accelerometers.”

“Whenever the user moves his neck in any direction, the camera will automatically change its field of view in the same direction. In this way, it gives a realistic experience to the user. The entire system is battery operated by which is rechargeable using solar power.”