A Decade of Human-Robot Interaction through Immersive Lenses: A Literature Review on Extended Reality as a Research Instrument in Social Robotics

arXiv:2602.15840v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Over the past decade, extended reality (XR), including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, gained attention as a research instrument in human-robot interaction studies, but remains underexplored in empirical investigations of social robotics. To map the field, we systematically reviewed empirical studies from 2015 to 2025. Of 6,527 peer-reviewed articles, only 33 met strict inclusion criteria. We examined (1) how XR and virtual social robots are used and in which contexts, (2) data collection and analysis methods, (3) demographics of the researchers and participants, and (4) the stated challenges and future agendas. Our findings show that social XR-HRI research is still dominated by laboratory simulations, while crucial specifications like used hardware, software, and robots are often not reported. Robots typically act as passive and less interactive visual stimuli, while the rich biosignal (e.g., eye-tracking) and logging functions of modern head-mounted displays remain largely untapped. The research teams and samples are predominantly tech-centric, Western, young, and male, with frequent gaps in demographic reporting. Key limitations include hardware delays, small homogeneous samples, and short, shallow study cycles. We propose a five-phase roadmap to establish social XR-HRI as a reliable research medium, which includes fostering methodological innovation, a reinforced ecological validity by, e.g., using application contexts, the improvement of the robot’s interaction quality, promoting diversity in the sample and the development of a social XR-HRI taxonomy. Advancing in these directions is essential for XR to mature from a lab prototype into an ecologically valid research instrument for social robotics.