An Immersive Game Projection Setup for Studies on Collaboration with a Real Robot

Collaborative robots (cobots) are becoming ubiquitous in industrial environments. With their ongoing development in terms of capabilities, safety, and accessibility, they can be expected to play bigger and bigger roles in our daily lives. Consequently, when cobots interact with humans, it is crucial that they communicate their intentions and expectations in order to minimize frustration, delays, and extra safety hazards. In order to investigate the effectiveness of different ways to design a cobot’s communication skills, our project has developed a unique research platform for user studies. By building on Virtual Reality (VR), thus increasing the freedom of design and avoiding safety concerns, two separate games putting players into collaborative situations with a simulated robot were developed in our prior work. This paper describes how the project’s final effort transferred such an experiment scenario to the combination of a real cobot and a modern multimedia projection room with tracking equipment, allowing for deeper studies based on a more immediate collaborative experience.