Extending the Body for Interaction with Reality

Abstract

Figure 1: We present an ownership-preserving direct manipulation technique in augmented reality, which allows interaction with remote devices in a ubicomp environment with the help of a long virtual arm. While the user's real hand is close to the body the virtual arm is of normal length (A) and by simply reaching out the user can make it extend to access remote devices in the room. For instance we allow adjusting the height of a table (B), opening and closing a curtain (C) and adjusting the angle of a tilting surface (D). ABSTRACTIn this paper, we explore how users can control remote devices with a virtual long arm, while preserving the perception that the artificial arm is actually part of their own body. Instead of using pointing, speech, or a remote control, the users' arm is extended in augmented reality, allowing access to devices that are out of reach. Thus, we allow users to directly manipulate real-world objects from a distance using their bare hands. A core difficulty we focus on is how to maintain ownership for the unnaturally long virtual arm, which is the strong feeling that one's limbs are actually part of the own body. Fortunately, what the human brain experiences as being part of the own body is very malleable and we find that during interaction the user's virtual arm can be stretched to more than twice its real length, without breaking the user's sense of ownership for the virtual limb.

Agency and Body Ownership in Immersive Virtual Reality Environments: A Laboratory Study

“…Moreover, as suggested above, our findings could show better results in case we used more body and natural related technologies where participants would use their own hands instead of may be perceived artificial controllers. We could build upon existing studies with regard to augmented reality that artificial arms are perceived as one own ones [12]. Here, for a future study we would integrate a control measurement to compare both technologies in order to investigate a possible of effect of a HMD controller versus a probably more natural technology.…”

Ownershift

“…However, while the authors do not discuss absolute ratings, it is clearly evident from their figures, that they observed positive ratings for referral of touch at 67.5 cm [29], as well as some evidence of the VHI at 30 cm displacement [34]. Furthermore, the body ownership illusion proved surprisingly robust to displacements away from the user, as explored for connected virtual arms, that were extended up to 3 times their normal length [18,24]. The latter examples, which provide evidence of ownership, despite displacement of the virtual hand, have in common that they were realized in immersive virtual en-vironments.…”

Iteratively Adapting Avatars using Task-Integrated Optimisation

“…One large attraction of Virtual Reality (VR) is that its users can embody avatars that differ from their bodies. For example, people can experience ownership of avatar bodies of different appearances [6,39], with extra limbs [37], or elongated arms [7,13]. Changes to the avatar may also increase the user's performance in interactive tasks [37].…”

“…For instance, in an exploration of VR avatars, Won et al chose adaptations that add a gain to leg movements and reduce the reach of the arm, but gave no rationale for the chosen constants of these modifications [37]. Other papers similarly pick changes to the morphology of the avatar seemingly arbitrarily (e.g., [7,13,31]).…”