Augmenting Immersive Telepresence Experience with a Virtual Body.

Nikunj Arora,Alexis P Chambers,Sakaria Pouke,Matti Pouke,Evan G Center,Katherine J Mimnaugh,Steven M Lavalle,Markku Suomalainen

doi:10.1109/tvcg.2022.3150473

Nikunj Arora, Alexis P Chambers + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/tvcg.2022.3150473

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Abstract

We propose augmenting immersive telepresence by adding a virtual body, representing the user's own arm motions, as realized through a head-mounted display and a 360-degree camera. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of having a virtual body in simulated environments; however, research on whether seeing one's own virtual arms increases presence or preference for the user in an immersive telepresence setup is limited. We conducted a study where a host introduced a research lab while participants wore a head-mounted display which allowed them to be telepresent at the host's physical location via a 360-degree camera, either with or without a virtual body. We first conducted a pilot study of 20 participants, followed by a pre-registered 62 participant confirmatory study. Whereas the pilot study showed greater presence and preference when the virtual body was present, the confirmatory study failed to replicate these results, with only behavioral measures suggesting an increase in presence. After analyzing the qualitative data and modeling interactions, we suspect that the quality and style of the virtual arms, and the contrast between animation and video, led to individual differences in reactions to the virtual body which subsequently moderated feelings of presence.

Highlights

Marvin Minsky coined the word ‘telepresence’ in his influential 1980s essay, suggesting a new paradigm of remote work where one could carry out complex physical tasks in remote locations while simultaneously receiving rich sensory feedback [31]
We found some support for an increase in implicit presence provided by the virtual body, but little to no support for benefits in regard to Place Illusion (PI), co-presence, explicit presence, or explicit preference upon initial analysis
Despite the failure to survive correction for multiple comparisons for the confirmatory study’s integrated motion effect, we take the combination of the pilot motion effect, the confirmatory motion effect, and both robustness checks in the confirmatory experiment as some evidence suggesting that having a virtual body offered participants an increased sense of implicit PI on an immediate time scale, given that each effect is statistically significant, or borderline statistically significant, in the predicted direction

Summary

Introduction

Marvin Minsky coined the word ‘telepresence’ in his influential 1980s essay, suggesting a new paradigm of remote work where one could carry out complex physical tasks in remote locations while simultaneously receiving rich sensory feedback [31]. In his view, the biggest challenge of telepresence was achieving the feeling of presence, the sensation of ‘being there’. One of the most influential definitions regarding this concept is Mel Slater’s framework of immersion and presence, in which the former is defined as the physical system’s capability of providing immersive experiences, whereas the latter refers to the subjective feeling of being in a virtual location [50]. Skarbez proposed a framework where the entirety of ‘presence’ would consist of PI, PSI as well as co- and social presence illusions, the latter referring to VR-generated illusions of being in the company of other people or interacting with others, respectively [5, 40]. 1

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