This work presents novel robot-mediated immersive experiences enabled by an encountered-type haptic display (ETHD) that introduces direct physical contact in virtual environments. We focus on social-physical interactions, a class of interaction associated with meaningful human outcomes in prior human-robot interaction (HRI) research. We explore the implementation of this interaction paradigm in immersive virtual environments through an object handover, fist bump, and high five with a virtual character. Extending this HRI paradigm into immersive environments enables the study of how physically grounded robotic contact and virtual augmentation jointly shape these novel social-physical interaction experiences. To support this investigation, we introduce ETHOS (Encountered-Type Haptics for On-demand Social interaction), an experimental platform integrating a torque-controlled manipulator and interchangeable props with a headset-mediated virtual experience. ETHOS enables co-located physical interaction through marker-based physical-virtual registration while concealing the robot behind the virtual environment, decoupling contact from visible robot embodiment. Both technical characterization, through spatial alignment and interaction latency tests, and experiential evaluation, through a 55 participant user study, were completed. Overall, the findings demonstrate the feasibility and experiential value of robot-mediated social-physical interaction in VR and motivate further development of dynamic encountered-type approaches for immersive HRI.

翻译：本研究提出了一种由遭遇式触觉显示器（ETHD）实现的、在虚拟环境中引入直接物理接触的新型机器人介导沉浸式体验。我们聚焦于社会物理交互——这类交互在先前的人机交互（HRI）研究中被证实与有意义的人类体验结果相关联。我们通过虚拟角色间的物体传递、碰拳和击掌动作，探索了该交互范式在沉浸式虚拟环境中的实现。将此类HRI范式延伸至沉浸式环境，有助于研究物理接地的机器人接触与虚拟增强如何共同塑造这些新型社会物理交互体验。为支持此项研究，我们开发了ETHOS（按需社会交互的遭遇式触觉平台），该实验平台将扭矩控制机械臂与可替换道具集成至头戴设备介导的虚拟体验中。ETHOS通过基于标记的物理-虚拟配准实现共址物理交互，同时将机器人隐藏于虚拟环境之后，使接触体验与可见的机器人实体解耦。研究完成了技术特性评估（包括空间对准与交互延迟测试）和体验性评估（通过一项55名参与者的用户研究）。总体而言，研究结果验证了VR中机器人介导社会物理交互的可行性与体验价值，并推动了面向沉浸式HRI的动态遭遇式交互方法的进一步发展。