The Benefits of Autonomous Navigation in Telepresence Robots and its Effect on Cognitive Load

Telepresence robots have become integrated into educational, medical, and workplace settings as the capabilities of remote technologies progress. Considering the recent pandemic, the employment of telepresence robots to digitally represent individuals in remote environments has become more important. The goal of this study was to investigate if implementing autonomous navigation through telepresence robots could reduce cognitive load and make operation easier for the user. While many studies involving telepresence robots examine navigation, there has been little research on how different types of navigation affect cognitive load and user experience. The present study measured differences between autonomous and manual navigation on cognitive load, spatial navigation, presence, and user experience during a scavenger hunt task using a telepresence robot. We hypothesized that participants who used the autonomous navigation feature would experience reduced cognitive load and better task performance than those who manually navigated the robot. We found that in the autonomous navigation condition, participants were able to navigate around the environment more efficiently and performed better in a memory task than those in the manual navigation condition. These results suggest that incorporating autonomous navigation functions into telepresence robots may lessen cognitive load, enabling individuals to attend to more stimuli in their environment.