Tele-embodiment issues

Imagine how people would react to the robotic surrogate version of yourself. It is highly unlikely that they would treat you exactly in the same way as if you were physically present. Recall from Section 10.4 that social interaction in VR depends on the avatars that people chose to represent themselves. With telepresence, you would be perceived as a robotic avatar, which leads to the same kinds of social issues [246]. The remote person may seem handicapped or awkward in a way that causes avoidance by others. Unfortunately, there is much less freedom to chose how you want to look in comparison to interaction in a purely virtual world. You may have to be perceived by everyone as an awkward screen on a stick if that is the platform. Research in social robotics and human-robot interaction may be useful in helping improve social interactions through such a robotic avatar [82,130,278].