Evaluation of the Difference of Human Behavior between VR and Real Environments in Searching and Manipulating Objects in a Domestic Environment

Abstract

It is important to evaluate and analyze human behaviors and reactions to build robots that can interact with people. While immersive virtual reality (VR) is one of the useful tools for the evaluation, it has been concerned that the human behavior may differ between VR and real environments due to the differences in cognitive characteristics. In this study, we investigated the differences in human behavior by focusing on common situations in the home environment; for example, a change in head position and posture is required when searching for an object (e.g., peeking motion) and when high accuracy is required when manipulating an object (e.g., placing an object on a shelf). We found that object manipulation requires accuracy which in turn, requires more time in the VR environment. In addition, the amount of change in head posture during object search and manipulation behavior was larger in the VR environment. Finally, we discuss the possibility of using the findings of this study to design robot competitions to assess the quality of human-robot interaction (HRI).