Participant Training for Virtual Reality User Studies: Lessons Learned and Open Questions

Jordan Allspaw, Gregory LeMasurier, Elizabeth Phillips, Holly Yanco

Keywords: Human-robot interaction (HRI), Training, Robot Teleoperation, Virtual Reality (VR)

TL;DR: In this paper we discuss lessons learned for training participants when running a VR teleoperation user study, as well open questions for how training can improve in the future.

Abstract: In the domain of human-robot interaction (HRI), teleoperating robots is a difficult task that often requires training to achieve proficiency. When Virtual Reality (VR) is used as a teleoperation method, there may be additional difficulties to achieving good performance due to general unfamiliarity with VR, and lack of standardized controls. With these factors in mind, properly training participants in studies utilizing VR is very important. In this paper, we will discuss VR teleoperation from a general research perspective, take inspiration from video games, and finally analyze training in our own user study. We conclude with recommendations for the community, as reporting our training methods and outcomes will allow us to develop best practices for VR teleoperation.

Submission Number: 11