Testing Human-Robot Interaction in Virtual Reality: Experience from a Study on Speech Act Classification

TL;DR

This study evaluates user perceptions of immersive and non-immersive VR in a smart agriculture scenario for speech act classification, highlighting strengths and weaknesses through participant feedback.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into how different VR modalities affect user experience in HRI tasks involving speech act understanding.

Findings

Immersive VR was generally preferred for engagement.

Non-immersive VR offered easier setup and accessibility.

Participants identified specific strengths and weaknesses of each VR type.

Abstract

In recent years, an increasing number of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) approaches have been implemented and evaluated in Virtual Reality (VR), as it allows to speed-up design iterations and makes it safer for the final user to evaluate and master the HRI primitives. However, identifying the most suitable VR experience is not straightforward. In this work, we evaluate how, in a smart agriculture scenario, immersive and non-immersive VR are perceived by users with respect to a speech act understanding task. In particular, we collect opinions and suggestions from the 81 participants involved in both experiments to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of these different experiences.