The HAVATAR project will develop new software skills for telepresence robots that will increase their level of autonomy, the teleoperation comfort of the user, and its social presence
at the remote site. Two academic partners with long-standing international experience in robotics projects (IST-ID Lisboa and ISR-UC Coimbra) will collaborate for the development
of the tele-autonomy skills and their integration in the healthcare added-value applications, that will be tested in realistic scenarios provided by Hospital da Luz Learning Health
(HL.LH). One application will be hosted at the HL.LH Simulation Center, where practitioner students, health professionals or other actors will remotely access a telepresence robot to
dynamically observe simulated clinical practices and interact with the local peers (e.g. simulated surgical acts, or simulated Intensive Care Unit in a pandemic scenario). In this
scenario, we will also study the issue of having multiple remote users sharing the same local space and interacting with each other via their proxy robots. The other application will
deploy one telepresence robot in the home of a patient and let the familiars or health professionals interact and program the robot to acquire added value variables and patient reported
data. In this application, we will study how extended periods of autonomy can be useful for healthcare professionals.