A team of researchers from Cornell University has developed a robot to serve as a proxy for remote workers.

Dubbed ReMotion, the so-called proxy robot will physically occupy the space left vacant by remote workers, mirroring their movements in real time and demonstrating body language largely lost in virtual environments, including pointing and gazing, which signals where the remote worker’s attention is.

Source: Cornell University

The 6 ft tall device features a monitor for a head, omnidirectional wheels for feet and game engine software for brains, according to its developers. To mimic the movements of an actual person, the system also includes the Cornell-developed wearable device dubbed NeckFace.

When worn by the remote worker, NeckFace tracks the wearer's head and body movements, the data for which is then sent remotely to the ReMotion Robot in real-time.

ReMotion is detailed in the article, “ReMotion: Supporting Remote Collaboration in Open Space with Automatic Robotic Embodiment,” which appears in the journal Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.