The world is entering a new normal of hybrid organisations, in which it will be common that some members are co-located and others are remote. Hybridity is rife with asymmetries that affect our sense of belonging in an organisational space. This paper reports a study of an XR Telepresence technology probe to explore how remote workers might present themselves and be perceived as an equal and unique embodied being in a workplace. VROOM (Virtual Robot Overlay for Online Meetings) augments a standard Mobile Robotic Telepresence experience by (1) adding a virtual avatar overlay of the remote person to the local space, viewable through a HoloLens worn by the local user, through which the remote user can gesture and express themselves, and (2) giving the remote user an immersive 360° view of the local space, captured by a 360° camera on the robot, which they can view through a VR headset. We ran a study to understand how pairs of participants (one local and one remote) collaborate using VROOM in a search and word-guessing game. Our findings illustrate that there is much potential for a system like VROOM to support dynamic collaborative activities in which embodiment, gesturing, mobility, spatial awareness, and non-verbal expressions are important. However, there are also challenges to be addressed, specifically around proprioception, the mixing of a physical robot body with a virtual human avatar, uncertainties of others’ views and capabilities, fidelity of expressions, and the appearance of the avatar. We conclude with further design suggestions and recommendations for future work.
@inproceedings{jones2021belonging,
author = {Jones, Brennan and Yaying Zhang (yaying-zhang) and Wong, Priscilla N. Y. and Rintel, Sean},
title = {Belonging There: VROOM-ing into the Uncanny Valley of XR Telepresence},
booktitle = {2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work},
year = {2021},
month = {April},
publisher = {ACM},
url = {https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/belonging-there-vroom-ing-into-the-uncanny-valley-of-xr-telepresence/},
}