Evaluation of an online human-robot interaction competition platform based on virtual reality – case study in RCAP2021

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many robot competitions have been canceled in the past years. To address this problem, we proposed a cloud-based VR platform for the crowdsourcing of embodied human-robot interactions. However, this system only suggested the feasibility of the competition application, and actual competitions had not yet been held and implemented. Therefore, through demonstration experiments in the RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) conducted in a hybrid format with on-site and remote participation, we evaluated the usefulness of using cloud computing on AWS from whether the latency time causes problems in human-robot interaction in a virtual reality environment.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Virtual reality
• human-robot interaction
• robot competition
• cloud-based computation
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://github.com/hsr-project

2 https://www.photonengine.com/en-US/Photon

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), JSPS (KAKENHI) [grant number 19K20379], and ROIS NII Open Collaborative Research [grant number 2021-21FP03].

Notes on contributors

Yoshiaki Mizuchi

Yoshiaki Mizuchi received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Soka University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2010, 2012, and 2016, respectively. He was a Project Researcher at the Principles of Informatics Research Division, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan, from 2016 to 2021. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the College of Engineering, Tamagawa University, Tokyo, Japan. His current research interests include human-robot interaction in daily life environments and the development of service robots utilizing immersive virtual reality techniques.

Hiroki Yamada

Hiroki Yamada received the B.E. and M.E. degrees from The University of Electro-Communications in 2002 and 2004 respectively. He is currently a Project Researcher with the Principles of Informatics Research Division, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan. His current research interests include virtual reality techniques for human-robot interaction and development of robot competition platform based on virtual reality.

Tetsunari Inamura

Tetsunari Inamura received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1995, 1997, and 2000, respectively. He was a Researcher of the CREST Program, Japanese Science and Technology Cooperation, from 2000 to 2003, and then joined the Department of Mechano-Informatics, School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, as a Lecturer, from 2003 to 2006. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Principles of Informatics Research Division, National Institute of Informatics, and an Associate Professor with the Department of Informatics, School of Multidisciplinary Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Tokyo, Japan. His current research interests include imitation learning, symbol emergence on social robots, and the development of interactive robots through virtual reality.