The virtual representation of the user in immersive virtual environments, the avatar, has elicited a lot of attention both in virtual reality and psychological research communities. In addition, with the increasing demand in virtual reality applications and games, the need to understand how users perceive their virtual representation is becoming more and more important. Following the original Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) experiment of Botvinick and Cohen (1998), a large number of researchers have been exploring users' sense of ownership towards fake limbs and other body parts in order to understand under which conditions the brain accepts them as part of the users' body. Virtual reality is a powerful tool to answer these questions as the user's avatar can be altered in numerous ways in order to assess changes in the sense of embodiment and behaviour. This project aims at pushing forward the knowledge of virtual embodiment in VR.
Publications
Argelaguet F., Hoyet L., Trico M. and Lecuyer A., "The role of interaction in virtual embodiment: Effects of the virtual hand representation," 2016 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), 2016, pp. 3-10. doi: 10.1109/VR.2016.7504682
Hoyet L, Argelaguet F, Nicole C and Lécuyer A (2016) “Wow! I Have Six Fingers!”: Would You Accept Structural Changes of Your Hand in VR? Front. Robot. AI 3:27. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2016.00027