Investigating the effect of the reality gap on the human psychophysiological state in the context of human-swarm interaction

The reality gap is the discrepancy between simulation and reality—the same behavioural algorithm results in different robot swarm behaviours in simulation and in reality (with real robots). In this paper, we study the effect of the reality gap on the psychophysiological reactions of humans interacting with a robot swarm. We compare the psychophysiological reactions of 28 participants interacting with a simulated robot swarm and with a real (non-simulated) robot swarm. Our results show that a real robot swarm provokes stronger reactions in our participants than a simulated robot swarm. We also investigate how to mitigate the effect of the reality gap (i.e., how to diminish the difference in the psychophysiological reactions between reality and simulation) by comparing psychophysiological reactions in simulation displayed on a computer screen and psychophysiological reactions in simulation displayed in virtual reality. Our results show that our participants tend to have stronger psychophysiological reactions in simulation displayed in virtual reality (suggesting a potential way of diminishing the effect of the reality gap). Subjects Human-Computer Interaction, Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics