: The presented experiment assessed the sense of embodiment when interacting with virtual hands with different levels of realism. (Left) Participants performed a series of pick-and-place tasks avoiding different obstacles (the iconic virtual hand and the "fire" obstacle are depicted). (Right) Additionally, participants performed a task in which the virtual hand was potentially threatened by a spinning saw. How do people appropriate their virtual hand representation when interacting in virtual environments? In order to answer this question, we conducted an experiment studying the sense of embodiment when interacting with three different virtual hand representations, each one providing a different degree of visual realism but keeping the same control mechanism. The main experimental task was a Pick-and-Place task in which participants had to grasp a virtual cube and place it to an indicated position while avoiding an obstacle (brick, barbed wire or fire). An additional task was considered in which participants had to perform a potentially dangerous operation towards their virtual hand: place their virtual hand close to a virtual spinning saw. Both qualitative measures and questionnaire data were gathered in order to assess the sense of agency and ownership towards each virtual hand. Results show that the sense of agency is stronger for less realistic virtual hands which also provide less mismatch between the participant's actions and the animation of the virtual hand. In contrast, the sense of ownership is increased for the human virtual hand which provides a direct mapping between the degrees of freedom of the real and virtual hand.
For example, it was questioned whether the virtual representation of a hand alters the sense of agency REF , which was demonstrated to be more related to the virtual hand control and the task efficiency than to the virtual hand representation.
The role of interaction in virtual embodiment: Effects of the virtual hand representation
2016 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR)
2016 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR)
Computer Science