Analysis of User Preferences for Robot Motions in Immersive Telepresence
This work addresses user experience design for telepresence robots in virtual reality, but it is incremental as it focuses on specific motion parameters without broader AI/ML implications.
The study investigated how different motion paths of a telepresence robot affect user preferences in immersive virtual reality, finding that comfort, forward speed, and turn characteristics most influenced preferences, with participants favoring a path at 1 m/s speed and fewer turns as most comfortable.
This paper considers how the motions of a telepresence robot moving autonomously affect a person immersed in the robot through a head-mounted display. In particular, we explore the preference, comfort, and naturalness of elements of piecewise linear paths compared to the same elements on a smooth path. In a user study, thirty-six subjects watched panoramic videos of three different paths through a simulated museum in virtual reality and responded to questionnaires regarding each path. Preference for a particular path was influenced the most by comfort, forward speed, and characteristics of the turns. Preference was also strongly associated with the users' perceived naturalness, which was primarily determined by the ability to see salient objects, the distance to the walls and objects, as well as the turns. Participants favored the paths that had a one meter per second forward speed and rated the path with the least amount of turns as the most comfortable