A Comparative Analysis of VR-Based and Real-World Human-Robot Collaboration for Small-Scale Joining

While VR as an interface for the teleoperation of robots has been well-studied in recent years, VR can also be used to advance our understanding of in-person human-robot interaction (HRI) by sim-ulating such interactions more repeatably and affordably than real-world studies. A few platforms now exist for studying human-robot interaction in VR, but little of this work has involved the study of the realism of specific, typical in-person HRI tasks. To evaluate this realism, we conduct a user study consisting of a collaborative assembly task where a robot and human work together to build a simple electrical circuit. We present a comparison of the task performed in the real world versus with virtual robot in VR. We discuss difficulties encountered and draw conclusions about what characteristics a virtual environment should have in order to support physical human-robot interactions.