A Human Touch: Social Touch Increases the Perceived Human-likeness of Agents in Virtual Reality

This paper deals with the design and the evaluation of human-like robot movements. Three criteria were proposed and evaluated regarding their impact on the human-likeness of the robot movements: The inertia of the base, the inertia of the end-effector and the velocity profile. A specific tool was designed to generate different levels of anthropomorphism according to these three parameters. An industrial use case was designed to compare several robot movements. This use case was implemented with a virtual robot arm in a virtual environment, using virtual reality. A user study was conducted to determine what were the important criteria in the perception of human-like robot movements and what were their correlations with other notions such as safety and preference. The results showed that inertia on the end-effector was of most importance for a movement to be perceived as human-like and nonaggressive, and that those characteristics helped the users feel safer, less stressed and more willing to work with the robot.

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Integrated jerk as an indicator of affinity for artificial agent kinematics: laptop and virtual reality experiments involving index finger motion during two-digit grasping

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.9843 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. e9843

Author(s):

James Hirose ◽

Atsushi Nishikawa ◽

Yosuke Horiba ◽

Shigeru Inui ◽

Todd C. Pataky

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Index Finger ◽

Artificial Agents ◽

Uncanny Valley ◽

Artificial Agent ◽

Hand Model ◽

Minimum Jerk ◽

Human Likeness ◽

Finger Motion ◽

Maximally Smooth

Uncanny valley research has shown that human likeness is an important consideration when designing artificial agents. It has separately been shown that artificial agents exhibiting human-like kinematics can elicit positive perceptual responses. However the kinematic characteristics underlying that perception have not been elucidated. This paper proposes kinematic jerk amplitude as a candidate metric for kinematic human likeness, and aims to determine whether a perceptual optimum exists over a range of jerk values. We created minimum-jerk two-digit grasp kinematics in a prosthetic hand model, then added different amplitudes of temporally smooth noise to yield a variety of animations involving different total jerk levels, ranging from maximally smooth to highly jerky. Subjects indicated their perceptual affinity for these animations by simultaneously viewing two different animations side-by-side, first using a laptop, then separately within a virtual reality (VR) environment. Results suggest that (a) subjects generally preferred smoother kinematics, (b) subjects exhibited a small preference for rougher-than minimum jerk kinematics in the laptop experiment, and that (c) the preference for rougher-than minimum-jerk kinematics was amplified in the VR experiment. These results suggest that non-maximally smooth kinematics may be perceptually optimal in robots and other artificial agents.

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User Responses to a Humanoid Robot Observed in Real Life, Virtual Reality, 3D and 2D

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.633178 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Martina Mara ◽

Jan-Philipp Stein ◽

Marc Erich Latoschik ◽

Birgit Lugrin ◽

Constanze Schreiner ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Real Life ◽

Presentation Mode ◽

Humanoid Robots ◽

Systematic Investigation ◽

Service Robot ◽

Presentation Modes ◽

Modes Of Presentation ◽

Human Likeness ◽

User Evaluations

Humanoid robots (i.e., robots with a human-like body) are projected to be mass marketed in the future in several fields of application. Today, however, user evaluations of humanoid robots are often based on mediated depictions rather than actual observations or interactions with a robot, which holds true not least for scientific user studies. People can be confronted with robots in various modes of presentation, among them (1) 2D videos, (2) 3D, i.e., stereoscopic videos, (3) immersive Virtual Reality (VR), or (4) live on site. A systematic investigation into how such differential modes of presentation influence user perceptions of a robot is still lacking. Thus, the current study systematically compares the effects of different presentation modes with varying immersive potential on user evaluations of a humanoid service robot. Participants (N = 120) observed an interaction between a humanoid service robot and an actor either on 2D or 3D video, via a virtual reality headset (VR) or live. We found support for the expected effect of the presentation mode on perceived immediacy. Effects regarding the degree of human likeness that was attributed to the robot were mixed. The presentation mode had no influence on evaluations in terms of eeriness, likability, and purchase intentions. Implications for empirical research on humanoid robots and practice are discussed.

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Social touch in virtual reality

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences ◽

10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.11.006 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

pp. 249-254

Author(s):

Alberto Gallace ◽

Matteo Girondini

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Social Touch

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Body Image and Anti-Fat Attitudes: An Experimental Study Using a Haptic Virtual Reality Environment to Replicate Human Touch

Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking ◽

10.1089/cyber.2015.0226 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 100-106 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Line Tremblay ◽

Mélina Roy-Vaillancourt ◽

Brahim Chebbi ◽

Stéphane Bouchard ◽

Michael Daoust ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Experimental Study ◽

Body Image ◽

Virtual Reality ◽

Virtual Reality Environment ◽

Human Touch

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Influence of Realistic Virtual Environments and Humanlike Avatars on Patients With Social Phobia

10.1115/detc2021-70265 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Milena Stefanova ◽

Margherita Pillan ◽

Alberto Gallace

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Social Phobia ◽

Virtual Environments ◽

Emotional Response ◽

Social Phobias ◽

Effect Theory ◽

Human Likeness ◽

Direct Contrast ◽

Visual Realism ◽

Different Levels

Abstract The practice of treating phobias with Virtual Reality-based therapies is a well-established field. Understanding the level of realism required by the therapy to be most effective is an essential matter of study. This research aims to explore the effects of visual realism on the emotional response in subjects with social phobia when exposed to VR-based applications. Social phobias are triggered by the presence of other people, which translated into virtual environments, refers to avatars. Our hypothesis is that patients with social phobia experience different emotional response to humanlike avatars compared to people without social phobia. To try the hypothesis, a prototype-based survey is conducted. Three types of avatars are implemented with different levels of human likeness: low, medium, and high. The analysis of the collected data suggests that for people with social phobias the anxiety is lowest for avatars with high levels of human likeness. This result is in direct contrast with the uncanny valley effect theory. The research explores how we should design virtual environments to make them more effective in the treatment of phobias. Moreover, the research produces new knowledge about the perception of humanlike avatars in virtual reality.

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Aspects of visual avatar appearance: self-representation, display type, and uncanny valley

The Visual Computer ◽

10.1007/s00371-021-02151-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Hepperle ◽

Christian Felix Purps ◽

Jonas Deuchler ◽

Matthias Wölfel

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Virtual Worlds ◽

Emotional Response ◽

New Technology ◽

Visual Representation ◽

Display Type ◽

Uncanny Valley ◽

Head Mounted Displays ◽

Human Likeness ◽

Real Person

AbstractThe visual representation of human-like entities in virtual worlds is becoming a very important aspect as virtual reality becomes more and more “social”. The visual representation of a character’s resemblance to a real person and the emotional response to it, as well as the expectations raised, have been a topic of discussion for several decades and have been debated by scientists from different disciplines. But as with any new technology, the findings may need to be reevaluated and adapted to new modalities. In this context, we make two contributions which may have implications for how avatars should be represented in social virtual reality applications. First, we determine how default and customized characters of current social virtual reality platforms appear in terms of human likeness, eeriness, and likability, and whether there is a clear resemblance to a given person. It can be concluded that the investigated platforms vary strongly in their representation of avatars. Common to all is that a clear resemblance does not exist. Second, we show that the uncanny valley effect is also present in head-mounted displays, but—compared to 2D monitors—even more pronounced.

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