Thesis Description & Objectives
The increasing adoption of immersive technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) is enabling new forms of remote and distributed collaboration. In many emerging scenarios, users operate across different realities—for instance, one participant interacting through AR while another is immersed in VR. These cross-reality settings introduce inherent asymmetries, as users may have access to different visual cues, perspectives, and interaction capabilities. Such differences can significantly influence how individuals coordinate, communicate, and contribute to shared tasks.
This thesis aims to investigate the emergence of leadership in cross-reality collaborative environments. In particular, the work will explore whether leadership dynamics are primarily shaped by the technological medium (e.g., AR vs. VR) or by the level of mutual awareness between users, often referred to as co-presence awareness. Understanding these factors is essential for identifying how control, initiative, and decision-making are distributed in asymmetric collaborative settings.
The student will design and implement experimental scenarios in which an AR user collaborates with a VR user on shared tasks. The experimental design will systematically vary the level of awareness cues available to participants, such as visibility of actions, gaze direction, or attention indicators. User interactions will be analyzed to assess leadership behaviors, including initiative taking, guidance, and task control. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be employed to evaluate how different configurations impact collaboration dynamics.
The expected outcome of this research is a deeper understanding of how immersive systems can unintentionally introduce imbalances in collaborative interactions. The findings will contribute to the design of cross-reality experiences that promote fair participation, balanced decision-making, and effective collaboration, regardless of the underlying technology. More broadly, the work may inform guidelines and design principles for developing equitable and user-centered XR collaborative systems.
References:
1. The Effects of Sharing Awareness Cues in Collaborative Mixed Reality
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7805624/
2. Empowerment and embodiment for collaborative MR systems
https://doi.org/10.1002/cav.1838
3. Who Owns What? Psychological Ownership in Shared AR
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S107158192100029X
4. Exploring User Behaviour in Asymmetric Collaborative Mixed Reality
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3562939.3565630
5. Persuasive Vibrations: Effects of Speech-Based Vibrations on Persuasion, Leadership, and Co-Presence During Verbal Communication in VR
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10108422
6. Towards Cross-Reality Interaction and Collaboration: A Comparative Study of Object Selection and Manipulation in Reality and Virtuality
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10108776
