Avatar anthropomorphism and illusion of body ownership in VR

In this paper we present a novel experiment to explore the impact of avatar realism on the illusion of virtual body ownership (IVBO) in immersive virtual environments, with full-body avatar embodiment and freedom of movement. We evaluated four distinct avatars (a humanoid robot, a block-man, and bot...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium pp. 229 - 230
Main Authors: Lugrin, Jean-Luc, Latt, Johanna, Latoschik, Marc Erich
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.03.2015
Subjects:
Anthropomorphism
Avatars
Color
Games
H.5.1 [Information Systems]: Artificial - Augmented and Virtual Realities
Skin
Visualization
ISSN:1087-8270
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In this paper we present a novel experiment to explore the impact of avatar realism on the illusion of virtual body ownership (IVBO) in immersive virtual environments, with full-body avatar embodiment and freedom of movement. We evaluated four distinct avatars (a humanoid robot, a block-man, and both male and female human adult) presenting an increasing level of anthropomorphism in their detailed compositions Our results revealed that each avatar elicited a relatively high level of illusion. However both machine-like and cartoon-like avatars elicited an equivalent IVBO, slightly superior to the human-ones. A realistic human appearance is therefore not a critical top-down factor of IVBO, and could lead to an Uncanney Valley effect.
ISSN:1087-8270
DOI:10.1109/VR.2015.7223379