Who am I Touching?: User Study of Remote Handshaking with a Telepresence Face

Abstract

In mediated communications, the social presence is said to be enhanced not only by eye contact and body gestures but also by remote haptics. To realize remote haptics, we present a mask telepresence system worn by a surrogate that displays the face of a remote user through a livestream. This system allows someone to shake the hand of a remote user via the surrogate. We conducted experiments where the surrogate contacted the participants to determine with whom the participants thought they shook hands: the surrogate or the remote user. We hy- pothesized that the relationship between the participant and surrogate or remote user is affected by the haptic sensations. Therefore, we prepared four conditions where the remote user was an acquaintance or a stranger and the surrogate was an acquaintance or a stranger. The results showed that, when the surrogate and the remote user were acquaintances, the participants felt like they were shaking hands with the remote user.