oa Towards socially-interactive telepresence robots for the 2022 world cup

The World Cup is the most widely viewed sporting event. The total attendance is in the hundreds of thousands. The first-ever World Cup in an Arab nation will be hosted by Qatar in 2022. As the country prepares for this event, the current paper proposes telepresence robots for the World Cup. Telepresence robots refer to robots that allow a person to work remotely in another place as he or she is physically present there. For such a big event like the World Cup, we can envision that organizers need to monitor the minute-by-minute events as they occur in multiple venues. Likewise, soccer fans who will not be able to attend the events can be present even if they are not physically present there and without the need to travel. Telepresence robots can make the organizers and participants to “be there”. This work describes some of the author's findings involving the interactions of humans and robots. Specifically, the works describe the user's perceptions and physiological data when touch and gestures are passed over the internet. The results show that there is much potential for telepresence robots to enhance the utility and the organizers' and participants' overall experience of the 2022 World Cup.