Avatars

Inside Virtual Reality (VR), users are represented by avatars. When the avatars are collocated from in first-person perspective, users experience what is commonly known as embodiment. When doing so, participants have the feeling that the own body has been substituted by the self-avatar, and that the new body is the source of the sensations. Embodiment is complex as it includes not only body ownership over the avatar, but also agency, co-location, and external appearance. Despite the multiple variables that influence it, the illusion is quite robust, and it can be produced even if the self-avatar is of a different age, size, gender, or race from the participant’s own body.

Our research with avatars has tried to push forward the boundaries of avatars, how they are perceived, how users behave when interacting with avatars, the basis of self-recognition on avatars, how avatars impact our locomotion in vr, and how they change our motor actions, all from both the computer graphics and the human computer interaction sides.

This line of research on avatars is also aiming to understand further effects on psychological and neuroscience theories.

As part of our effort we have released and contributed with two main opensource projects to the communtiy.

2020 release of the Microsoft Rocketbox avatar library

2018 release of a Standarized Embodiment Questionnaire