Is That Me?—Embodiment and Body Perception with an Augmented Reality Mirror

Abstract

Virtual reality has been used intensively to study embodiment and body perception, in particular for research purposes in psychological domains. Virtual avatars are used to resemble users' appearance and to implement interactively simulated behaviour. To make this a realistic and believable experience users should feel embodiment, i.e. ownership, agency, and self-location/presence. State-of-the-art capture and display technologies allow for extending virtual reality embodiment to the realm of augmented reality for higher efficacy—instead of seeing a virtual reality body one would see a captured, 3D representation of their own body naturally controlled by their real body movements within the context of the present real environment. However, it is unclear whether users would experience embodiment with their augmented reality avatar and whether findings from virtual reality targeting body perception can be replicated. Here we present an augmented reality system comprising a 3D point cloud capturing system (Microsoft Kinect) and an optical see-through head-mounted display (Microsoft HoloLens), both connected to a purpose-developed application displaying a user's body in a virtual 3D mirror embedded into the real environment. In a study with 24 participants, we evaluated embodiment and body weight perception as a proof of concept. This is based on a similar study conducted in Virtual Reality. Our findings show that users experience ownership and agency with the mirrored body and that body weight perception in virtual and augmented reality systems is similar.