Cyberselves' Animus: 'Teleportation' tech that could spark a revolution in robotics

The word "teleportation” conjures up images of a Star Trek-style machine that dematerialises its occupants into an energy pattern before rematerialising them on the surface of some exotic planet. While we are still some way off being beamed up by Scotty, a Sheffield-based startup could be on the verge of revolutionising telepresence, essentially “teleporting” the user into the body of a robot, where they feel physically present, and even have control over its movements.

The questions that such a technology poses are far-reaching, and at times, frankly, a little confusing. What would it feel like to teleport into a robot and then tap yourself on the shoulder?

To explain more about telepresence we spoke to Daniel Camilleri and Michael Szollosy, co-founders and CEO and COO of Cyberselves, a software development company that, in its own words, is “realising the true potential of robotics”.

“Telepresence is like a regular video call, but then taken up a couple of notches. With a regular video call, you're using vision, hearing, and voice. With telepresence our vision is coupled with our movement,” explains Camilleri.

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“You can look around the scene where you are placed. You can touch and you can even have a sense of how your body is positioned. It’s about upgrading a regular video call to a more physical interaction".

“It gives the user the feeling of being in the same place as you and I could control where I look. I could reach out and shake your hand and feel myself shaking your hand. It basically increases emotional engagement and would give us more of an emotional connection", adds Szollosy.

Cyberselves stands out among robotics startups because they don’t make any actual robots. What they have made, however, is Animus, a universal robotics framework that works with any robot, on any platform, and in any programming language.

Animus was created to be the basis of any robotics application, ranging from those with zero autonomy, where a human is in charge of all robot actions, all the way to fully autonomous applications hosted on the robot or in the cloud.

The applications for Animus are myriad. For example, in healthcare, a person could leverage the inbuilt telepresence application to “visit” a loved one in hospital, cutting out distance barriers and sidestepping quarantine restrictions. It could also be used as a tool to combat isolation and loneliness, especially among elderly people, or those in remote areas.

There is also plenty of scope for defence applications. Cyberselves has already been awarded two contracts by the UK government’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) to develop Animus for use in on-land and subsea bomb disposal and nuclear decommissioning.

In terms of distance, Animus’ record so far is around 7000 km, from Sheffield to Doha, and the company is currently in talks with a firm in Singapore, which would push that number up to almost 11,000 km.

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They’ve also cut latency time to 150 milliseconds, a vast improvement on the 300-400 millisecond delay of a normal video call. Though they are quick to point out that this is dependent on factors like bandwidth and distance.

“We've got the latency down to a point where it's possible to directly control a robot without experiencing VR sickness for a high percentage of people. It's not quite as high as VR games are at, which is roughly 98%, but I'd say probably 80-85% of the population would be comfortable using it", says Camilleri.

The duo even argues that as satellites become more ubiquitous in orbit, the scope to use Animus in space is likely to become more viable. As an app that is all about not putting people in harm’s way, its potential in space – arguably the ultimate hostile environment - should require no explanation.

Though for now, Cyberselves is working largely with the manufacturing sector. “We feel that Animus augments a lot of the value that a robot delivers. It can increase a robot’s value because then you're providing your users with something universal", he adds.

Animus provides developers with a means for creating applications and robot skills that target the entirety of the robotics market instead of just one specific robot. Animus also allows existing and upcoming robot hardware manufacturers to use the apps created by others in their robot without extensive re-engineering as is currently the case thus significantly reducing their time to market.

One stumbling block for the company in its native UK has been a cultural hesitancy towards automation, which is slowing down its adoption, with the US, Asia, and other European countries all being far larger markets for the robotics sector.

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While this is slowly changing, the company has experienced “a smaller risk appetite” among UK investors, who are used to imagining robots as a complete package, including both software and hardware. The problem was echoed last year by International Federation of Robotics (IFR) chief Susanne Bieller in an interview with IE at GMIS2021 last November.

For now though, says Michael Szollosy, it’s a case of continuing to showcase Animus’ benefits. “The idea of a software that's robot agnostic is very new and can be hard for many people to get their heads around", he says.

Truly explaining telepresence to someone who hasn’t tried it is like “explaining what the colour orange is to a blind person”, Daniel explains. “It’s more like a fundamental experience”.

Like with many new experiences, humans are usually quick to learn. “Technically, you're in two places at once. Which does take some getting used to, but the brain adapts quickly. When you're in a robot for over an hour, you forget about your own body. You do feel like you're in another place, and the senses quickly adapt to one of the variations”, says Szollosy.

The company provides a VR experience at the science and tech conferences they attend, where users can get used to being “in” a robot, working out how it operates and the feeling of being there. Once the basics are picked up, users move on to basic tasks, like picking up cubes.

The company is starting to get attention from some big names. In November 2019, Cyberselves used Japanese tech giant SoftBank’s iconic Pepper robot to demonstrate Animus’ abilities.

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They’ve also landed a place in the finals of the ANA Avatar XPrize, a four-year competition aiming to push the boundaries of telepresence tech, with the final taking place this November in Los Angeles.

Cyberselves has plenty of reasons to be cheerful. They’ve created a universal robotics framework for robots at a time when Industry 4.0 is beginning to morph into Industry 5.0, and the fragmented robotics sector is crying out for something to pull it together.

“It took the Windows operating system to unite all the hardware platforms to spark the PC revolution. It took the Android operating system to unite all the hardware of the mobile phone revolution”, Szollosy surmises.

“So, let’s say, Animus is the Android and Windows to spark a revolution in robotics.”

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