A collaborative research team between Ryota Kondo, a graduate student at Toyohashi University of Technology, and the University of Tokyo and Keio University, found that the gloves and socks in front of them move in synchronization with the movement of their limbs, creating a transparent body. Appeared interpolated, indicating that it felt as if it were one's own body (an illusion of physical possession).
When you trace the rubber hand with a brush and trace the hidden real hand, the rubber hand feels like your own hand (rubber hand illusion).You can also feel a sense of full-body ownership by seeing a virtual avatar (a character that becomes your alter ego) synchronized with physical exercise.However, it was unclear whether the transparent body, which is located away from the real body, could feel possession or could be manipulated freely by an active method.
Therefore, this time, we focused on physical exercise and developed a method to feel a sense of ownership in a transparent body.Twenty students who participated in the experiment were asked to wear an HMD (head-mounted display) and observe only gloves and socks or a full-body avatar 20 m in front of the virtual reality space.Questionnaires and behavioral measurements show that when these move (synchronize) with the true movement of the body, it feels as if the body is 2 meters away.
By this method, it is possible to learn by presenting complicated skills and movements performed by others with only the whole body or limbs, and by superimposing one's transparent body on it.Since the transparent body does not block the object, you can put your body there while watching the movements and operation objects of others, which leads to the promotion of skill transfer and movement learning.
In the future, when a free body becomes available in a space on a network (cyber society), it will be an opportunity to think about how the communication freed from the body will change.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Illusory body ownership of an invisible body interpolated between virtualhands and feet via visual-motor synchronicity
