A Human Touch: Social Touch Increases the Perceived Human-likeness of Agents in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality experiences and games present believable virtual environments based on graphical quality, spatial audio, and interactivity. The interaction with in-game characters, controlled by computers (agents) or humans (avatars), is an important part of VR experiences. Pre-captured motion sequences increase the visual humanoid resemblance. However, this still precludes realistic social interactions (eye contact, imitation of body language), particularly for agents. We aim to make social interaction more realistic via social touch. Social touch is non-verbal, conveys feelings and signals (coexistence, closure, intimacy). In our research, we created an artificial hand to apply social touch in a repeatable and controlled fashion to investigate its effect on the perceived human-likeness of avatars and agents. Our results show that social touch is effective to further blur the boundary between computer- and human-controlled virtual characters and contributes to experiences that closely resemble human-to-human interactions.