Assessment of robot to human instruction conveyance modalities across virtual, remote and physical robot presence

Most Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) experiments are costly and time consuming because they involve deploying a physical robot in a physical space. Experiments using virtual environments can be easier and less expensive, but it is difficult to ensure that the results will be valid in the physical domain. To begin to answer this concern, we have performed an evaluation comparing participants' understanding of robotic guidance instructions using robots that were virtually, remotely, or physically present for the experiment. All but one set of experimental conditions gave similar results across the three presence levels. Further, we find that qualitative responses about the robots were largely the same regardless of presence level.