Locomotion and telepresence in virtual and real worlds

We present a system in which a human master commands in a natural way the locomotion of a humanoid slave agent in a virtual or real world. The system combines a sensorized passive locomotion platform (Cyberith Virtualizer) for the walking human, the V-REP simulation environment, an Aldebaran Nao humanoid robot with on-board vision, and a HMD (Oculus Rift) for visual feedback of the virtual or real scene. Through this bidirectional human-robot communication, the human achieves a telepresence that may be useful in different application domains. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the quality and limits of the achieved immersive experience for the user.