  We introduce Reality Fusion, a novel robot teleoperation system that
localizes, streams, projects, and merges a typical onboard depth sensor with a
photorealistic, high resolution, high framerate, and wide field of view (FoV)
rendering of the complex remote environment represented as 3D Gaussian splats
(3DGS). Our framework enables robust egocentric and exocentric robot
teleoperation in immersive VR, with the 3DGS effectively extending spatial
information of a depth sensor with limited FoV and balancing the trade-off
between data streaming costs and data visual quality. We evaluated our
framework through a user study with 24 participants, which revealed that
Reality Fusion leads to significantly better user performance, situation
awareness, and user preferences. To support further research and development,
we provide an open-source implementation with an easy-to-replicate custom-made
telepresence robot, a high-performance virtual reality 3DGS renderer, and an
immersive robot control package. (Source code:
https://github.com/uhhhci/RealityFusion)
