Investigating Body Transfer Illusion from Human to Monkey Body

JAVORSKÝ, Tomáš, Filip ŠKOLA, Stella SYLAIOU, João MARTINS and Fotis LIAROKAPIS. Investigating Body Transfer Illusion from Human to Monkey Body. Online. In 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS 2018). Funchal - Madeira, Portugal, Portugal: IEEE Computer Society, 2018, p. 549-556. ISBN 978-1-5386-7097-2. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IS.2018.8710499.

Basic information

• Original name: Investigating Body Transfer Illusion from Human to Monkey Body
• Authors: JAVORSKÝ, Tomáš (703 Slovakia, belonging to the institution), Filip ŠKOLA (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Stella SYLAIOU, João MARTINS and Fotis LIAROKAPIS (300 Greece, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Funchal - Madeira, Portugal, Portugal, 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS 2018), p. 549-556, 8 pp. 2018.
• Publisher: IEEE Computer Society

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Proceedings paper
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: electronic version available online
• WWW: URL
• Impact factor: Impact factor: 4.464
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14330/18:00109881
• Organization unit: Faculty of Informatics
• ISBN: 978-1-5386-7097-2
• ISSN: 1541-1672
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IS.2018.8710499
• UT WoS: 000469337900080
• Keywords in English: virtual reality; body transfer illusion; sensors
• Tags: firank_B
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

This paper presents a virtual reality study examining the magnitude of embodiment into a human and nonhuman avatar. It examines the user experience of inhabiting the body of animals in immersive virtual environments. Participants embodied in a human-like virtual avatar experienced body transfer illusion into a body of a monkey. The experiment consisted of two variants. In the first variant, participants did not have the ability to control the hands inside the Monkey avatar, they were instructed to just look over the scene from their fixed point of view. In the second variant, the ability to move arms and hands of the Monkey avatar was enabled, and this fact was articulated to the test subjects. Results suggest that the body transfer illusion is indeed possible. The study also indicates that the actual shape or visual representation of the body matters less than the amount and diversity of stimuli, and possibilities of controlling the avatar's body. Results of this study can be leveraged in the design of e-learning, health-care, and affective computing platforms, where amplification of the human-oriented design using malleable virtual avatars can bring additional feedback channel to the users.