TY - GEN
T1 - Unwinding Rotations Improves User Comfort with Immersive Telepresence Robots
AU - Suomalainen, Markku
AU - Sakcak, Basak
AU - Widagdo, Adhi
AU - Kalliokoski, Juho
AU - Mimnaugh, Katherine J.
AU - Chambers, Alexis P.
AU - Ojala, Timo
AU - Lavalle, Steven M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Business Finland (project HUMOR 3656/31/2019); Academy of Finland (projects PERCEPT 322637, CHiMP 342556); and the European Research Council (project ILLUSIVE 101020977)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - We propose unwinding the rotations experienced by the user of an immersive telepresence robot to improve comfort and reduce VR sickness of the user. By immersive telepresence we refer to a situation where a 360° camera on top of a mobile robot is streaming video and audio into a head-mounted display worn by a remote user possibly far away. Thus, it enables the user to be present at the robot's location, look around by turning the head and communicate with people near the robot. By unwinding the rotations of the camera frame, the user's viewpoint is not changed when the robot rotates. The user can change her viewpoint only by physically rotating in her local setting; as visual rotation without the corresponding vestibular stimulation is a major source of VR sickness, physical rotation by the user is expected to reduce VR sickness. We implemented unwinding the rotations for a simulated robot traversing a virtual environment and ran a user study (N=34) comparing unwinding rotations to user's viewpoint turning when the robot turns. Our results show that the users found unwound rotations more preferable and comfortable and that it reduced their level of VR sickness. We also present further results about the users' path integration capabilities, viewing directions, and subjective observations of the robot's speed and distances to simulated people and objects.
AB - We propose unwinding the rotations experienced by the user of an immersive telepresence robot to improve comfort and reduce VR sickness of the user. By immersive telepresence we refer to a situation where a 360° camera on top of a mobile robot is streaming video and audio into a head-mounted display worn by a remote user possibly far away. Thus, it enables the user to be present at the robot's location, look around by turning the head and communicate with people near the robot. By unwinding the rotations of the camera frame, the user's viewpoint is not changed when the robot rotates. The user can change her viewpoint only by physically rotating in her local setting; as visual rotation without the corresponding vestibular stimulation is a major source of VR sickness, physical rotation by the user is expected to reduce VR sickness. We implemented unwinding the rotations for a simulated robot traversing a virtual environment and ran a user study (N=34) comparing unwinding rotations to user's viewpoint turning when the robot turns. Our results show that the users found unwound rotations more preferable and comfortable and that it reduced their level of VR sickness. We also present further results about the users' path integration capabilities, viewing directions, and subjective observations of the robot's speed and distances to simulated people and objects.
KW - head-mounted dis-play
KW - telepresence
KW - virtual reality
KW - VR sickness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137073712&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85137073712&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889388
DO - 10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889388
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85137073712
T3 - ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
SP - 511
EP - 520
BT - HRI 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 17th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2022
Y2 - 7 March 2022 through 10 March 2022
ER -