XR$^3$: An Extended Reality Platform for Social-Physical Human-Robot Interaction
Chao Wang, Anna Belardinelli, Michael Gienger

TL;DR
XR$^3$ is an innovative virtual reality platform enabling realistic social-physical human-robot interactions by synchronizing real-time operator movements with a virtual robot in shared physical space.
Contribution
The paper introduces XR$^3$, a novel dual-VR-headset system that allows co-located human-robot interaction studies with synchronized physical contact and expressive virtual embodiments.
Findings
Enables realistic touch-based robot interactions in VR.
Supports precise motion retargeting and nonverbal cue manipulation.
Reduces barriers to prototyping embodied robot behaviors.
Abstract
Social-physical human-robot interaction (spHRI) is difficult to study: building and programming robots that integrate multiple interaction modalities is costly and slow, while VR-based prototypes often lack physical contact, breaking users' visuo-tactile expectations. We present XR, a co-located dual-VR-headset platform for HRI research in which an attendee and a hidden operator share the same physical space while experiencing different virtual embodiments. The attendee sees an expressive virtual robot that interacts face-to-face in a shared virtual environment. In real time, the robot's upper-body motion, head and gaze behavior, and facial expressions are mapped from the operator's tracked limbs and face signals. Because the operator is co-present and calibrated in the same coordinate frame, the operator can also touch the attendee, enabling perceived robot touch synchronized with…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSocial Robot Interaction and HRI · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts · Tactile and Sensory Interactions
