Comparison of human psychology for real and virtual mobile manipulators

When robots coexisting with humans are designed, it is important to evaluate psychological influence of shape, size and motion of the robots on the humans. For this purpose, an evaluation system of human psychology for coexisting robots using virtual reality is discussed. Virtual (CG) robots are visually presented to a human subject using CAVE system. The subject answers questionnaire about his impression on the robots and their motions, and his psychological state is evaluated. In the present paper, whether humans have similar impressions and feelings for real and virtual robots is investigated. Real and virtual mobile manipulators reach for subjects and pass nearby them. In both situations, the same motion patterns by these robots are presented to the subjects and psychologically evaluated by questionnaire. As the comparison results of this experiment, the subjects had similar feelings for the real and virtual robots.