Abstract
Abstract Telemedicine has become a valuable asset in emergency responses for assisting paramedics in decision making and first contact treatment. Paramedics in unfamiliar environments or time-critical situations often encounter complications for which they require external advice. Modern ambulance vehicles are equipped with microphones, cameras, and vital sensors, which allow experts to remotely join the local team. However, the visual channels are rarely used since the statically installed cameras only allow broad views at the patient. They neither allow a close-up view nor a dynamic viewpoint controlled by the remote expert. In this paper, we present EyeRobot, a concept which enables dynamic viewpoints for telepresence using the intuitive control of the user’s head motion. In particular, EyeRobot utilizes the 6 degrees of freedom pose estimation capabilities of modern head-mounted displays and applies them in real-time to the pose of a robot arm. A stereo-camera, installed on the end-effector of the robot arm, serves as the eyes of the remote expert at the local site. We put forward an implementation of EyeRobot and present the results of our pilot study which indicates its intuitive control.
Highlights
Communication is a key aspect of successful medical treatment
Modern ambulance vehicles are equipped with microphones and cameras which are accessible for remote experts
We expect the benefits of EyeRobot to be manifold: (a) The utilization of network bandwidth can be optimized rather due to existing well-optimized real-time video streaming libraries. (b) By capturing stereoscopic images with a baseline similar to the average interpupillary distance of a human, the 3D perception is intuitive to understand. (c) The control of the viewing angle and position of the robot deems to be intuitive since the end-effector of the robot arm mimics the movement of the user’s head. (d) The remote expert gains an exceptional 3D spatial understanding through the two visual cues motion parallax and stereopsis
Summary
Communication is a key aspect of successful medical treatment. Due to the fast modernization of connected devices, establishing a communication lines between two parties often only require mere seconds. Telemedicine describes the practice of utilizing digital long-distance communication for connecting patients and doctors anywhere in the world and is a rapidly growing technology and beneficial for inpatient, outpatient, and remote care [1]. It naturally increases the availability of expert knowledge at a given time, reduces travel expenses, and synergizes with digital patient data acquisition. The remote experts are neither able to change their viewpoint nor able to have a close-up view of the patient Instead, they have to instruct the paramedics to manually move a mobile camera to their desired view [2].
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