Video: Oculus Rift-controlled robot could be your ‘personal avatar’

A group of roboticists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed a robot that incorporates high-level sensors and Oculus Rift virtual reality to give the user a fully immersive experience from a remote location.

According to an IEEE Spectrum report, the DORA system (which stands for Dexterous Observational Roving Automaton) streams video taken from the robot’s cameras, which look a little bit like the face of WALL-E, to the Oculus Rift. Sensors on the VR headset monitor the user’s head motion and send the data to the robot, which is programmed to replicate those movements in real time. So when the user turns his or her head to the left, the robot does too, and it streams the video immediately, giving off the feeling that the user is in the same environment as the robot.

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