  A remote collaboration setup allows an expert to instruct a remotely located
novice user to help them with a task. Advanced solutions exist in the field of
remote guidance and telemanipulation, however, we lack a device that combines
these two aspects to grant the expert physical access to the work site. We
explore a setup that involves three parties: a local worker, a remote helper
and a handheld robot carried by the local worker. Using remote maintenance as
an example task, the remote user assists the local user through diagnosis,
guidance and physical interaction. We introduce a remote collaboration system
with a handheld robot that provides task knowledge and enhanced motion and
accuracy capabilities. We assess the proposed system in two different
configurations: with and without the robot's assistance features enabled. We
show that the handheld robot can mediate the helper's instructions and remote
object interactions while the robot's semi-autonomous features improve task
performance by 37%, reduce the workload for the remote user and decrease
required verbal communication bandwidth. Our results demonstrate the
effectiveness of task delegation with the remote user choosing an action and
the robot autonomously completing it at the local level. This study is a first
attempt to evaluate how this new type of collaborative robot works in a remote
assistance scenario. We believe that the proposed setup and task-delegation
concepts help to leverage current constrains in telemanipulation systems.
