Abstract
Touch-rich human-robot interaction (HRI) is difficult to study: building and programming physical robots is costly and slow, while VR-based robot prototypes often remove physical contact or break the tight coupling between an agent's body and the user's felt touch. We present VR2VR, a co-located dual VR-headset platform for HRI research in which a participant and a hidden operator share the same physical space while experiencing different virtual embodiments. The participant sees an expressive virtual robot that interacts face-to-face in a shared virtual environment. In real time, the robot's upper-body gestures, head and gaze behaviors, and facial expressions are mapped from the operator's tracked motion and face signals. Because the operator is physically co-present and calibrated into the same coordinate frame, the operator can also physically touch the participant, enabling the participant to perceive robot touch aligned with the robot's hands; finger and hand motion are mapped to the robot using inverse kinematics to support precise contact. Beyond faithful motion retargeting for limb teleoperation, our VR2VR system supports experimental control by retargeting or selectively enabling nonverbal channels (e.g., head only vs. head+eyes vs. head+eyes+facial expressions) while keeping physical interaction constant. We detail the system design, calibration workflow, and safety considerations, and demonstrate the platform through a touch-based Wizard-of-Oz HRI study, illustrating how VR2VR lowers barriers for rapidly prototyping and rigorously evaluating embodied, touch-centric robot behaviors.
Abstract (translated)
触觉丰富的机器人交互（HRI）研究颇具挑战性：制造和编程实体机器人成本高昂且耗时，而基于虚拟现实的机器人原型往往会移除物理接触或破坏代理身体与用户感知到的触摸之间的紧密耦合。我们提出了一种名为VR2VR的双VR头显平台，用于共存空间中的HRI研究，在这种平台上，参与者和隐藏的操作员共享同一物理空间但拥有不同的虚拟化身。参与者可以看到一个具有表现力的虚拟机器人在共享的虚拟环境中进行面对面交互。通过实时映射操作员被追踪的动作及面部信号，机器人的上半身手势、头部与视线行为以及面部表情得以再现。由于操作者在同一坐标系中身体共存且已校准，因此他们可以物理地接触参与者，从而使参与者能够感知到与机器人手部动作相一致的触觉；手指和手臂运动通过逆向动力学映射至机器人的手部以支持精确接触。 除了为肢体远程操作提供忠实的动作重定向外，我们的VR2VR系统还通过重新定位或选择性启用非语言通道（例如仅头部、头部+眼睛或头部+眼睛+面部表情）来进行实验控制，同时保持物理交互不变。我们详细介绍了系统的架构设计、校准工作流程以及安全考虑，并通过基于触觉的“魔术师之助”HRI研究展示了该平台的能力，说明了VR2VR如何降低快速原型制作和严格评估以触摸为中心的机器人行为的门槛。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12395
