ShareYourReality
Investigating Haptic Feedback and Agency in Virtual Avatar Co-embodiment
Karthikeya Puttur Venkatraj (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))
Wo Meijer (TU Delft - Knowledge and Intelligence Design)
Monica Perusquía-Hernández (Nara Institute of Science and Technology)
Gijs Huisman (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)
Abdallah El Ali (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Virtual co-embodiment enables two users to share a single avatar in Virtual Reality (VR). During such experiences, the illusion of shared motion control can break during joint-action activities, highlighting the need for position-aware feedback mechanisms. Drawing on the perceptual crossing paradigm, we explore how haptics can enable non-verbal coordination between co-embodied participants. In a within-subjects study (20 participant pairs), we examined the effects of vibrotactile haptic feedback (None, Present) and avatar control distribution (25-75%, 50-50%, 75-25%) across two VR reaching tasks (Targeted, Free-choice) on participants’ Sense of Agency (SoA), co-presence, body ownership, and motion synchrony. We found (a) lower SoA in the free-choice with haptics than without, (b) higher SoA during the shared targeted task, (c) co-presence and body ownership were significantly higher in the free-choice task, (d) players’ hand motions synchronized more in the targeted task. We provide cautionary considerations when including haptic feedback mechanisms for avatar co-embodiment experiences.
help_outline