Feel the Presence: The Effects of Haptic Sensation on VR-Based Human-Robot Interaction

Virtual reality (VR) has been increasingly utilised as a simulation tool for human-robot interaction (HRI) studies due to its ability to facilitate fast and flexible prototyping. Despite efforts to achieve high validity in VR studies, haptic sensation, an essential sensory modality for perception and a critical factor in enhancing VR realism, is often absent from these experiments. Studying an interactive robot help-seeking scenario, we used a VR simulation with haptic gloves that provide highly realistic tactile and force feedback to examine the effects of haptic sensation on VR-based HRI. We compared participants' sense of presence and their assessments of the robot to a traditional setup using hand controllers. Our results indicate that haptic sensation enhanced participants' social and self-presence in VR and fostered more diverse and natural bodily engagement. Additionally, haptic sensations significantly influenced participants' affective-related perceptions of the robot. Our study provides insights to guide HRI researchers in building VR-based simulations that better align with their study contexts and objectives.