Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Science and DFG-Project Leader "Somatechnically Mediated Telexistence - Identitary, Intercorporeal and Social Theoretical Implications of the Control of and Interaction with Telerobots". Realizing empirical studies at IIT - Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence Research Group for the research project.
The project “Social Telexistence” is meant to realize an empirical study on the effect of using telerobotic avatars as representatives of the teleoperators body. The study addresses the effects of robot actions on the teleoperator's body perception, which is determined by the transfer of object manipulation, personal characteristics and the social interaction of the robot with an interaction partner at a remote location. The study is interdisciplinary in nature and seeks to combine social science methods (qualitative data analysis) with technical, analytical methods.
The DFG-funded project entitled Somatotechnically Mediated Telexistence - Identitary, Intercorporeal and Social Theoretical Implications of the Control of and Interaction with Telerobots establishes a collaboration between the AMI at the IIT in Genoa, Italy and the Department of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Phases of data collection and long-term avatar experiments were conducted over a period
of 12 months (8 months active) as a long-term study with 4 participants (8-10 sessions each) in the robotics lab of AMI at IIT.
The project design is mainly focussed on the teleoperator's physical experiences with telexistence (or telepresence). Previously undiscovered physical
potentials will be analysed and the necessities for experiencing the feeling of (tele-) ‘existence’ with an avatar body shall be uncovered.
For social science research, this project allows to uncover the aforementioned hidden body characteristics and to provide empirically based evidence for technologically induced embodiment phenomena such as sensations of body extension, body change or body displacement, which could decisively expand the approaches to the theories of the sociology of the body with decisive new insights. The study also offers an outlook on the potential consequences of the implementation of telerobotic avatars in society and attempts to close existing research gaps on the role of technology in the sociology of the body.
The interdisciplinary design of the long-term study and its qualitative empirical findings on ‘social telexistence’ contribute to a holistic understanding of the extent of the dislocation phenomenon of body substitution in technical body representations and allow the identification of future application scenarios of telexistence technologies. (Aligning with IIT Objective #3: Societal Responsibility /“The goal of transferring innovative research results to market and to society is as important as the research itself.” (IIT Vademecum p.5)).
In retrospect, the study on the long-term application of teleoperation technology provides crucial information for AMI/ IIT researchers by revealing technical gaps, additional user-orientated requirements and thus the need for technical improvements to both the teleoperation system (sensors/suits/VR glasses/perspectives) and the humanoid robot.
https://www.soziologie.uni-konstanz.de/en/chair-of-general-sociology-and-cultural-sociology-prof-dr-christian-meyer/research/translate-to-englisch-forschungsprojekte/dfg-project-somatechnically-mediated-telexistence/
