Human-robot studies are expensive to conduct and difficult to control, and as
such researchers sometimes turn to human-avatar interaction in the hope of
faster and cheaper data collection that can be transferred to the robot domain.
In terms of our work, we are particularly interested in the challenge of
detecting and modelling user confusion in interaction, and as part of this
research programme, we conducted situated dialogue studies to investigate
users' reactions in confusing scenarios that we give in both physical and
virtual environments. In this paper, we present a combined review of these
studies and the results that we observed across these two embodiments. For the
physical embodiment, we used a Pepper Robot, while for the virtual modality, we
used a 3D avatar. Our study shows that despite attitudinal differences and
technical control limitations, there were a number of similarities detected in
user behaviour and self-reporting results across embodiment options. This work
suggests that, while avatar interaction is no true substitute for robot
interaction studies, sufficient care in study design may allow well executed
human-avatar studies to supplement more challenging human-robot studies.

本论文探讨了如何利用虚拟环境中的人 - 头像交互模拟物理环境中的人 - 机器人交互，并展示了这两种模式下用户行为和自我报告结果的相似之处。该研究表明，即使存在态度差异和技术控制限制，也可以通过精心设计的人 - 头像研究来补充挑战更大的人 - 机器人研究。