Recent research in robotic proxies has demonstrated that one can automatically reproduce many non-verbal cues important in co-located collaboration. However, they often require a symmetrical hardware setup in each location. We present the VRoxy system, designed to enable access to remote spaces through a robotic embodiment, using a VR headset in a much smaller space, such as a personal office. VRoxy maps small movements in VR space to larger movements in the physical space of the robot, allowing the user to navigate large physical spaces easily. Using VRoxy, the VR user can quickly explore and navigate in a low-fidelity rendering of the remote space. Upon the robot’s arrival, the system uses the feed of a 360 camera to support real-time interactions. The system also facilitates various interaction modalities by rendering the micro-mobility around shared spaces, head and facial animations, and pointing gestures on the proxy. We demonstrate how our system can accommodate mapping multiple physical locations onto a unified virtual space. In a formative study, users could complete a design decision task where they navigated and collaborated in a complex 7.5m x 5m layout using a 3m x 2m VR space.

TickTockRay is a smartwatch-based raycasting technique designed for smartphone-based head mounted displays. It demonstrates that smartwatch-based raycasting can be reliably implemented on an off-the-shelf smartphone and may provide a feasible alternative for specialized input devices. We release TickTockRay to the research community as an open-source plugin for Unity along with an example application, a Minecraft VR game clone, that shows the utility of the technique for placement and destruction of Minecraft blocks.