Feel the Sync: The Effects of Shared Haptic Feedback on Short-Cycle Repetitive Turn-Taking Collaboration of Remote Users in Virtual Reality

Short-cycle repetitive collaborations are prevalent in industry and everyday life, where rapid turn-taking requires effective multimodal cues to convey collaborators’ intentions and action-timing. However, current remote collaboration in virtual reality (VR) relies heavily on visual cues, increasing fatigue and hindering communication. We investigated the impact of shared haptic feedback on remote collaborative experiences by measuring interpersonal synchrony and self-reported perceptions in a short-cycle, repetitive joint assembly task. We manipulated haptic conditions (Both, Self, Partner, None) based on feedback sources. Participants demonstrated higher action-timing synchrony with bi-directional haptic feedback than with uni-directional partner feedback. Notably, the heart rate synchrony was comparably induced in the Both and Self conditions, suggesting egocentric tendencies in interpreting others’ intentions. Survey results corroborated the behavioral and physiological findings, highlighting the importance of bi-directional haptic feedback. Our findings establish shared haptic feedback as an effective means of enhancing remote collaboration while reducing the visual dependency of VR.