Analysis of User Preferences for Robot Motions in Immersive Telepresence

This paper considers how the motions of a telepresence robot moving autonomously affect a person immersed in the robot through a head-mounted display. In particular, we explore the preference, comfort, and naturalness of elements of piecewise linear paths compared to the same elements on a smooth path. In a user study, thirty-six subjects watched panoramic videos of three different paths through a simulated museum in virtual reality and responded to questionnaires regarding each path. Preference for a particular path was influenced the most by comfort, forward speed, and characteristics of the turns. Preference was also strongly associated with the users’ perceived naturalness, which was primarily determined by the ability to see salient objects, the distance to the walls and objects, as well as the turns. Participants favored the paths that had a one meter per second forward speed and rated the path with the least amount of turns as the most comfortable.

[1]  Steven M. LaValle,et al.  Human Perception-Optimized Planning for Comfortable VR-Based Telepresence , 2020, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

[2]  Eunhee Chang,et al.  Virtual Reality Sickness: A Review of Causes and Measurements , 2020, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[3]  Paulo Menezes,et al.  A Natural Interface for Remote Operation of Underwater Robots , 2017, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[4]  Carl Machover,et al.  Virtual reality , 1994, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[5]  Eric Rosen,et al.  Comparing Virtual Reality Interfaces for the Teleoperation of Robots , 2020, 2020 Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS).

[6]  Jean-Paul Laumond,et al.  An Optimality Principle Governing Human Walking , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[7]  Frank Chongwoo Park,et al.  Natural Movement Generation Using Hidden Markov Models and Principal Components , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B (Cybernetics).

[8]  Victoria Interrante,et al.  Distance Perception in Immersive Virtual Environments, Revisited , 2006, IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (VR 2006).

[9]  Ronald Marsh,et al.  Distance Accuracy of Real Environments in Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays , 2020, 2020 IEEE International Conference on Electro Information Technology (EIT).

[10]  Tsvi Kuflik,et al.  Analysis and Prediction of Museum Visitors' Behavioral Pattern Types , 2012, Ubiquitous Display Environments.

[11]  Dirk Wollherr,et al.  Human-Like Motion Planning Based on Game Theoretic Decision Making , 2018, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[12]  Rachid Alami,et al.  Synthesizing Robot Motions Adapted to Human Presence , 2010 .

[13]  Shuo Wang,et al.  Design of Virtual Reality Teleoperation System for Robot Complex Manipulation , 2019, 2019 Chinese Automation Congress (CAC).

[14]  Rodrigo Ventura,et al.  Immersive 3-D teleoperation of a search and rescue robot using a head-mounted display , 2009, 2009 IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation.

[15]  Mel Slater,et al.  A Framework for Immersive Virtual Environments (FIVE): Speculations on the Role of Presence in Virtual Environments , 1997, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[16]  Maria V. Sanchez-Vives,et al.  From presence to consciousness through virtual reality , 2005, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[17]  Rosa María Baños,et al.  Immersion and Emotion: Their Impact on the Sense of Presence , 2004, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[18]  Karl F. MacDorman,et al.  The Uncanny Valley [From the Field] , 2012, IEEE Robotics Autom. Mag..

[19]  Paul Bremner,et al.  Towards an immersive user interface for waypoint navigation of a mobile robot , 2020, ArXiv.

[20]  J. Trafton,et al.  The Perception of Humanness from the Movements of Synthetic Agents , 2011, Perception.

[21]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[22]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Socially compliant mobile robot navigation via inverse reinforcement learning , 2016, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[23]  Stephen Palmisano,et al.  Effects of dynamic field-of-view restriction on cybersickness and presence in HMD-based virtual reality , 2020, Virtual Reality.

[24]  Sven Behnke,et al.  A VR System for Immersive Teleoperation and Live Exploration with a Mobile Robot , 2019, 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

[25]  Israel Becerra,et al.  Assessing Postural Instability and Cybersickness Through Linear and Angular Displacement , 2019, Hum. Factors.

[26]  S. Hu,et al.  Systematic investigation of physiological correlates of motion sickness induced by viewing an optokinetic rotating drum. , 1999, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[27]  K. Bengler,et al.  Measuring egocentric distance perception in virtual reality: Influence of methodologies, locomotion and translation gains , 2019, PloS one.

[28]  Toshio Fukuda,et al.  Natural motion generation of biped locomotion robot using hierarchical trajectory generation method consisting of GA, EP layers , 1997, Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[29]  David Whitney,et al.  Comparing Robot Grasping Teleoperation Across Desktop and Virtual Reality with ROS Reality , 2017, ISRR.

[30]  Steven M. LaValle,et al.  Defining Preferred and Natural Robot Motions in Immersive Telepresence from a First-Person Perspective , 2021, ArXiv.

[31]  Margaret Volante.  Qualitative research. , 2008, Nurse researcher.

[32]  Carman Neustaedter,et al.  Geocaching with a Beam: Shared Outdoor Activities through a Telepresence Robot with 360 Degree Viewing , 2018, CHI.

[33]  Robert S. Kennedy,et al.  Simulator Sickness Questionnaire: An enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness. , 1993 .

[34]  Steven M. LaValle,et al.  Randomized Kinodynamic Planning , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[35]  Sven G. Kratz,et al.  Immersed remotely: Evaluating the use of Head Mounted Devices for remote collaboration in robotic telepresence , 2016, 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).

[36]  Ramviyas Parasuraman,et al.  VR Based Robot Teleoperation Interface for Virtual Tour , 2018 .

[37]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[38]  Carman Neustaedter,et al.  Robotic Telepresence at Scale , 2017, CHI.

[39]  Amy LaViers.  Make robot motions natural , 2019, Nature.

[40]  Séamas Weech,et al.  Presence and Cybersickness in Virtual Reality Are Negatively Related: A Review , 2019, Front. Psychol..

[41]  Heloir,et al.  The Uncanny Valley , 2019, The Animation Studies Reader.