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Robot avatar lets people see and feel things remotely through VR: A humanoid robot can relay video and touch sensations to a person wearing haptic feedback gloves and a virtual reality (VR) headset hundreds of kilometres away, offering a way for people to attend events without travelling

A person wearing a VR headset and haptic feedback gloves can control the iCub 3 robot and experience being somewhere else

A humanoid robot can relay video and touch sensations to a person wearing haptic feedback gloves and a virtual reality (VR) headset hundreds of kilometres away, offering a way for people to attend events without travelling. “The key is to translate every signal and bit of numeric data that can be sent through the network,” says Stefano Dafarra at the Italian Institute of Technology, who was part of the iCub 3 team. There can be a small delay of up to 100 milliseconds to capture and transmit the visual footage, but the operator can mitigate this by moving slightly slower than normal.

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