Teleconferencing robot with swiveling video monitor

A teleconferencing robot for enabling a remote conferee to project a sense of presence into a group meeting, said remote conferee located remotely from said group meeting, the teleconferencing robot comprising:

• a base comprising an upper stage and a lower stage and wherein the lower stage and upper stage are rotatably related to one another about a substantially vertical axis;
• one and only one video monitor secured to the upper stage and video monitor secured to the upper stage and movably mounted to the lower stage, said video monitor receiving and displaying a life-sized image of the remote conferee's face;
• the base includes means for vertically displacing the upper and lower parts relative to one another;
• a video camera;
• control means including a rotating drive unit for rotating the upper stage containing the video monitor relative to the lower stage in response to an input control signal derived from the remote signal generated by the remote conferee;
• a sound location system for generating a speaker location signal in response to which control means can automatically swivel said video monitor with said image of the remote conferee's face to look at another conferee speaking in an automatic mode;
• and wherein said video monitor moves in response to one of said input control signal to enable the remote conferee to project a sense of presence into the group meeting in a manual mode, and a speaker location signal generated by said sound location system in the automatic mode.