Towards the use of mixed reality for hri design via virtual robots

Mixed reality, which seeks to better merge virtual objects and theirinteractions with the real environment, offers numerous potentialsfor the improved design of robots and our interactions with them. Inthis paper, we present our ongoing work towards the developmentof a mixed reality platform for designing social interactions withrobots through the use of virtual robots. We present a summaryour work thus far on the use of the platform for investigatingproxemics between humans and virtual robots, and also highlightfuture research directions. These include the consideration of moresophisticated interactions involving verbal behaviours, interactionwith small formations of virtual robots, better integration of virtualobjects into real environments and experiments comparing the realsystems with their virtual counterparts.QC 20201208