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A Cybernetic Avatar System to Embody Human Telepresence for Connectivity, Exploration, and Skill Transfer

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Abstract

This paper describes the cybernetic avatar system developed by Team JANUS for connectivity, exploration, and skill transfer: the core domains targeted by the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition, for which Team JANUS was a finalist. We used as an avatar a humanoid robot with a human-like appearance and shape that is capable of reproducing facial expressions and walking, and built an avatar control system that allowed the operator to control the avatar through equivalent mechanisms of motion; that is, by replicating the upper-body movement with naturalness and by stepping to command locomotion. In this way, we aimed to achieve high-fidelity telepresence and managed to be well evaluated from the point of view of the operator during the competition. We introduce our solutions to the integration challenges and present experimental results to asses our avatar system, together with current limitations and how we are planning to mitigate them in future work.

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Data availability

The video material associated with this manuscript is publicly available on YouTube.

Notes

  1. https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar.

  2. https://unit.aist.go.jp/jrl-22022/en/projects/janus/team-janus.html.

  3. https://unit.aist.go.jp/jrl-22022/en.

  4. https://www.lirmm.fr/teams-en/IDH-en.

  5. https://j-d.co.jp.

  6. Sophia, the avatar of team Aham [23], is another impressive humanoid avatar with a close-to-human look and excellent skills for manipulation, but it still relies on wheels to locomote.

  7. https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar/articles/on-the-ground-at-the-ana-avatar-xprize-semifinals.

  8. https://spectrum.ieee.org/xprize-robot-avatar.

  9. The safety switch chosen by XPRIZE has a spring that requires a force of about 5 kg\(\cdot \)f to be applied (measured by us); however, XPRIZE removed that spring to ease the task.

  10. For comparison, other teams struggled to keep their robots below the maximum limit (160 kg) established by ANA Avatar XPRIZE [11].

  11. https://www.mumble.info/.

  12. https://vive.com/us/product/vive-pro-eye/overview/.

  13. https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/facial-tracker/.

  14. https://vive.com/us/accessory/tracker3/.

  15. See the blend shape 03.JAW_OPEN at https://hub.vive.com/storage/docs/en-us/UnityXR/UnityXRLipExpression.html.

  16. The postures of the hand markers correspond to the ones of the operator, not of the robot, and they can be different as it will be discussed in Sect. 7.2

  17. https://jrl-umi3218.github.io/mc_rtc/.

  18. As the Semifinals occurred during the pandemic, some teams (including ours) could not be tested during the main event in Miami, so the judges traveled and tested our system in our laboratory at LIRMM in Montpellier, France.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Masahiro Kato, Ryoma Koshi, Shoichi Yaguchi, and Natsumi Mashiko for their engineering work in this project, as well as Luigi Penco from Inria for the active discussions.

Funding

This research was partially funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) with the JST-Mirai Program, grant number JPMJMI21H4, and by JSPS KAKENHI, grant numbers JP1190410 and JP982714.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-AIST JRL (Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/IRL, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

    Rafael Cisneros-Limón, Antonin Dallard, Mehdi Benallegue, Kenji Kaneko, Hiroshi Kaminaga, Pierre Gergondet, Rohan Pratap Singh, Leyuan Sun, Yang Chen, Guillaume Lorthioir, Masato Tsuru, Sélim Chefchaouni-Moussaoui, Guillaume Caron, Kevin Chappellet, Mitsuharu Morisawa, Adrien Escande, Ko Ayusawa, Younes Houhou, Iori Kumagai, Fumio Kanehiro & Abderrahmane Kheddar

  2. CNRS-University of Montpellier, Laboratoire d’Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM), Montpellier, France

    Antonin Dallard, Arnaud Tanguy, Carole Fournier & Abderrahmane Kheddar

  3. School of Integrative & Global Majors (SIGMA), University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yang Chen

  4. Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tokyo, Japan

    Yukiko Osawa

  5. Double R &D, Zama, Japan

    Michio Ono, Koji Shirasaka, Shiryu Wada & Hiroshi Wada

Authors
  1. Rafael Cisneros-Limón
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  2. Antonin Dallard
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  3. Mehdi Benallegue
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  4. Kenji Kaneko
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Contributions

RCL, AD, MB, KK, HK, PG, AT, RPS, LS, YC, CF, GL, MT, SCM, YO, GC, KC, MM, AE, KA, YH, IK, MO, KS, SW, HW, FK and AK (all authors) contributed in some way to the avatar system’s conception, design and development. The leading and management of team Janus was performed by AK and FK. The team name (JANUS) was proposed by AK. The technical management of the team and overview of all the development was performed by RCL, the first author. The team logo was created by MB. Mechanical and electrical improvements of the avatar robot were performed by KK and HK. Maintenance of the robot, low-level control, and system was performed by KK, HK, FK, RCL, and RPS. Simulation of the robot and the teleoperation system was performed by RCL, GL, and PG. Implementation of vision, sound, and the wireless network was done by KK, RPS, LS, and YC. Design and manufacture of the D-Hands were carried out by HK, MO, KS, SW, and HW. Integration of the D-Hands into the system was done by HK, FK, RCL, and PG. Conceptualization and development of the haptic sensory system were performed by RCL, HK, YO, SCM, and AT. Design and implementation of the E-Stop was performed by MM and AT. Preparation of the operator system was done by KA, AT, LS, YC, AD, and PG. Conceptualization and development of the enhanced visual feedback were performed by MB, YC, LS, AD, and CF. Conceptualization and development of the operator interface were done by AD, MB, CF, PG, and GL. Implementation of the transmission of expressions was done by RPS and LS. Implementation of the haptic feedback on the operator side was performed by AD, CF, and PG. Development of the software framework was done by AT, PG, AD, and KC. Conceptualization, evaluation, and implementation of upper-body retargeting were performed by MB, AE, AD, CF, and IK. Balance, locomotion, and footstep planning were improved for this project by MB, AD, and MT. Implementation of admittance control for safe interaction was developed and implemented by MB and AD. Evaluation of the avatar system was done by RCL, AD, GL, MB, PG, HK, and YH. The manuscript was written by RCL, AD, MB, HK, RPS, LS, YO, CF, MM, GL, and AK. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael Cisneros-Limón.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders have no role in the study’s design, in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Not applicable.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants who tested our teleoperation system.

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Cisneros-Limón, R., Dallard, A., Benallegue, M. et al. A Cybernetic Avatar System to Embody Human Telepresence for Connectivity, Exploration, and Skill Transfer. Int J of Soc Robotics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-01096-9

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