Abstract
Since the corona pandemic, the demand of remote communication solutions has increased significantly. A more uncommon platform to communicating remotely is given through telepresence robots. Telepresence robots are used by schools and universities for giving lectures or for students attending classes. In human-robot teams or at university, robots are also used for teamwork. However, the use of telepresence robots in virtual team building exercises has not been investigated immensely. Therefore, this work examines if telepresence robots are suitable for virtual team building exercises. Moreover, it is investigated whether an overall team building effect can be achieved. Thereby, subjects are divided in smaller telepresence robot groups (communicating via video conferencing). In turn the smaller telepresence robot groups communicate with the overall group through their telepresence robot. As team building exercises Pictionary as well as a QR code scavenger hunt were performed. The study took place as part of the virtual freshmen week at the faculty of computer science and business information systems. Team building was measured through a quantitative questionnaire. The results show that an overall team building effect could be achieved and that telepresence robots can be used successfully for virtual team building. However, the team building effect was significantly higher in the small telepresence robot groups than in the overall group.
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Keller, L., Gawron, O., Rahi, T., Ulsamer, P., Müller, N.H. (2021). Driving Success: Virtual Team Building Through Telepresence Robots. In: Zaphiris, P., Ioannou, A. (eds) Learning and Collaboration Technologies: Games and Virtual Environments for Learning. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12785. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77943-6_18
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