Remote You, Haru and Me: Exploring Social Interaction in Telepresence Gaming With a Robotic Agent

Novel forms of two-player telegame interaction might extend and enhance social connection between physically separated persons. We examine the potential of a Rock-Paper-Scissors game conveyed via an embodied telepresence agent. We compare a game interaction with an autonomous robot and a game interaction with a teleoperated version of the same robot. Both systems are equipped with a perception module that processes and recognizes the hand movement of the human players colocated with the robot. In the classic interaction, the robot acts as the opponent player. In the telegame setting, the robot represents and mirrors the actions of the remote human player as the opponent. We integrate the systems on the tabletop robot platform Haru and evaluate user impressions with respect to game experience and robot sociality. Results show that the telegame is perceived more positively, indicating its potential for physically distant, but socially enhanced interaction in the future.