A Study of Communication Modalities in a Virtual Collaborative Task

This paper examined the relative effectiveness of three communication modalities in a collaborative virtual environment. Communication modalities of verbal only (V), haptic only (H), and both (HV), were used in a 2D pointing task. A total of 36 participants were paired into 18 dyads. In each dyad, there was a supervisor and an acting agent. The supervisor used one of the three modalities to guide the acting agent to reach the target location. The time to task completion and the trajectory were recorded and analyzed. The results indicate that subjects using verbal only and haptic+verbal communication performed equally well in the collaborative pointing task. Subjects using haptic only communication spent more time and had longer path lengths than verbal only and haptic+verbal communication. Nevertheless, all three modalities were effective in communicating in a virtual collaborative task.