Lessons From A Small-Scale Robot Joining Experiment in VR

Padraig Higgins, Ryan Barron, Donald Engel, Cynthia Matuszek

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Sim2Real, Human Robot Collaboratio

TL;DR: We present a shared manipulation task performed both in VR with a simulated robot and in the real world, and a set of design desiderata to be considered when conducting sim2real experiments involving humans in a virtual setting.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a shared manipulation task performed both in virtual reality with a simulated robot and in the real world with a physical robot. A collaborative assembly task where the human and robot work together to construct as simple electrical circuit was chosen. While there are platforms available for conducting human robot interactions using virtual reality, there has not been significant work investigating how it can influence human perception of tasks that are typically done in person. We present an overview of the simulation environment used, describe the paired experiment being performed, and finally enumerate a set of design desiderata to be considered when conducting sim2real experiment involving humans in a virtual setting.

Submission Number: 9