Applying personal robots and Active Interface to video conference systems

Robots for personal use like current personal computers will appear in an office or at home in the near future. We call these robots personal robots. As of today, a personal robot can be thought as a small general-purpose autonomous mobile robot. For a personal robot interface, we have already proposed a new user interface concept: Active Interface. Active Interface does not only wait for users' explicit input but also tries to get information from users' implicit input and external environment. Based on the gathered information, it acts spontaneously and keeps the system in an advantageous condition for users. In this paper, we apply personal robots and Active Interface concept to a video conference system. The system should be made flexible and user-friendly. In brief, we design and implement a self-movable, flexible and user-friendly video conference system.